This page is intended to help people find out who I am by my mark. I (Wendy Roberts) sign paintings with the signature mark “W Roberts” or “wroberts” including a floral W mark with my last name legible. I chose to shorten down my name because it’s too distracting to sign all 12 letters in my full name. Maybe someday I will manage to come up with a way to paint a fully legible signature of my full name, but as of now, I really like signing with a mark that reads W Roberts where the W is also a water flower symbol for waterlilies and lotuses that grow beauty from the mud. The symbolism of those flowers has always captured my imagination.
Earlier work or small paintings sometimes have a waterlily motif with just my initials WR. The current mark is a compromise between a symbol signature (such as Albrecht Dürer, J.M William Turner, Toulouse-Lautrec, Dante Rosetti, among many other logo-like pictorial signature examples), and the majority of artists who sign their names legibly with part of their name to make it easy to read. In rare circumstances of exceedingly small paintings, just the stylized W flower in my legible signature is used with the main priority being to keep the signature in harmony with the painting. This is even smaller and simpler than my full waterlily mark with initials.
Sometimes the signature is placed on the edge of the painting instead of the front if the edges were painted. Always the signature is in service to the painting – the image takes precedence and the signature is meant to be harmonious..
