Waxing Poetic with Artecera

I always had a fondness for Romance languages, and I’m not sure why. I adore French songs in many genres, own several French-language CDs, and rather enjoy mangling the language in closed quarters with my sadly limited vocabulary. The same goes for Spanish and, to a lesser degree, Italian. It’s no surprise, then, that I chose to brand my encaustic paintings with a name derived from Latin.

Thanks to online language translation tools, I quickly learned that “arte cera” means wax art. How perfect could that be for encaustic paintings? Whereas “wax art” sounded utilitarian, Artecera had flair. It was lyrical, relevant, and unique … or so I thought.

It turned out that a maker of candlesticks in Germany had beaten me to the punch. But with words like “Wir gestalten Taufkerzen, Hochzeitskerzen, Kommunionskerzen” to describe their business, I figured my mostly English-speaking encaustic painting audience wouldn’t be so confused.

I also toyed with the name “Artcetera”, or Atc., which I thought was very clever, especially since encaustic art is an “other” art, not having yet entered the general lexicon. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the first person (or second, or third…) to think so. From newspaper blog names to foundation names to benefits for AIDS, leukemia, and lymphoma, my “brilliant idea” was elbowing for attention in cyberspace.

Many artists simply use their full names to brand their art, and perhaps I should’ve taken this route. I like my surname, Primicias, but it’s often misspelled, tricky to pronounce, too long, and is altogether difficult to remember. Besides, it seems “Victoria Primicias” is the name of a news site in Ecuador, resulting in my personal Facebook page receiving many friend requests mistakenly sent by people I don’t know. Lo siento, amigos!

I’m an advocate for less confusion and simplicity which is reflected in my encaustic paintings. Given the choices – Victoria Primicias Encaustics, Victoria Primicias Wax Art, Artcetera Art, or Artecera Fine Art–did I make the right decision? Perhaps, and perhaps not, but you know what they say. Que sera, sera.

07/26/2020 Update: I have reverted to simply using my name, Victoria Primicias Art.