The Name Is a Symptom

Big Mike on July 31, 2026

what’s in a name?

For over a year I’ve been trying to find the name that can best reflecte my artistic identity as a true reflection of me, my art, and why I make it. I’ve worked under several different names over the years as I’ve grown, my work has evolved, and my life has changed. It has been said that you aren’t just selling your art but yourself, and I have wanted to make sure that the name on my art is as much a part of the art as the imagery, style and materials I use. It all needs to be working toward the same goal. I was looking for a name that would match my identity rather than looking for an identity I want to match it.

I’ve tried dozens. Some clever. Some ridiculous. Some that felt perfect…until they didn’t. During the process, I kept assuming I was searching for a better name and perhaps I was, but it was bigger than that. Turns out I was searching for a better understanding of myself and my motivations and the role I want to fill as a midwest folk trickster and what approach I will be taking as I begin making art that will reflect this new world that I occupy.

Discovery

As I continued to go in circles, wrapping myself a name, trying it on, sitting with it, and eventually growing more uncomfortable with it, I discovered something. Every name I liked six months ago reflected who I used to think I wanted to be. Not who I’m becoming. The trouble was, I wasn’t yet sure who that person was. I think I’m finally beginning to figure that out.

The Pattern

I was stuck believing I wanted people to think:

  • funny
  • irreverent
  • lowbrow
  • approachable

But when I looked at the words I’ve been using to describe my work lately, a different pattern appeared. Now I keep saying things like:

  • grounded
  • weathered
  • industrial
  • prairie
  • agricultural
  • handmade
  • dry
  • ironic without being sarcastic
  • healthy skepticism
  • Midwestern

What I thought was a branding exercise was really an exercise in defining my identity. A name to reflect my purpose.

previous iterations

Moe Profane

As I was hitting my middle 30s, my creative itch had been fermenting for years, building until it finally exploded into my first mature body of work. I had read about the Stuckist movement in the UK and their leader, Billy Childish. His art didn’t resonate with me, but the way his name reflected his motivations and purpose really stuck with me. The recovering Catholic side of me decided to make art under the name Moe Profane which would also match the persona I had already been cultivating in the Louisville, KY hipster/art/music scene. Moe Profane was my id. He said and painted things that I never would have.

Dick Van Der Wurst

It wasn’t long after that I began to grow more and more uncomfortable with the name. It seemed silly. I was older and less angry. I wanted to be lighter and less negative. I looked for a name that would embrace the Texas German heritage and reflect some of the pop culture and humor as well. An annual South Texas event, Wurstfest (sausage festival) inspired wonderful puns (wurst/worst), and “Dick” worked as a not-so-subtle nod toward my still somewhat irreverent iconoclastic worldview.

Mikey Likey

My move to Illinois got me thinking that I needed something a bit more grounded and less silly, but every bit as connected to my work. I gravitated toward the name and eventually embraced “Mikey Likey,” but I believe now that I was too eager to settle the matter and was settling because it was familiar. It is a phrase I have said enough times that my sister actually uses it as a playful nickname for me. It felt poppy and fun and positive. It seemed perfect for a while, but soon I was having doubts. I didn’t want a name that might eventually make me cringe when introducing myself.

It isn’t that I dislike the name. I dislike the assumptions it creates. It sounds playful. Not serious. Young and cute. Not strong and grounded. It isn’t subtle. Just too much of the wrong vibe. Meant to be ironic, it risked just being a silly joke no one got. I feared it might require me to project myself in an inauthentic way in order to meet the expectations it would put in people’s heads. That’s not what I really wanted or needed.

The better question

Eventually I stumbled upon a better question to ask while judging how well a name would work.

Instead of asking:

“Do I like this name?”

I started asking:

“What kind of man do I want people to imagine before they see the paintings?”

That question led me where I needed to go.

Then I heard a name…

As time passed I kept encountering names that would have me asking, “Oh, damn. Why didn’t I think of that before? I wish I had chosen something like that.” Then a name appeared that I thought was perfect. Woodcock. Strong, independent, authentic…I figured if I combined it with the right first name it could have just a hint of old school “TV detective” and “male porn star” in the same way I have wanted names in the past to have a kind of anti-establishment, punk rocker type of vibe. Real enough to not sound invented, but just perfect enough that someone might stop and think, “That name is so spot on, it almost sounds made up” rather than “Oh wow, he made up a funny name.”

I was feeling that it wasn’t so much…

“That’s funny.”

But instead more of…

“That sounds like a guy who has busted a few knuckles.”

New Perspective

I realized I was inadvertently trying to invent a persona when what I actually want is to discover my own…and label it. My art and I really have no need for a persona at all. The best artist name might not be the funniest. Or the cleverest.

When I checked Google to see if there other Otis Woodcocks out there that might give me reason to avoid that name, I found one. But rather than discouraging me, it reassure me. The moment I put this fact to that name, I knew I didn’t want to be ol’ Otis “Woody” Woodcock, but this shared name would embody an attitude my authentic self would be able to comfortably deliver.

It felt like a name that had existed long before I found it.

clean sheet of paper with a sharpie ready to write.

The Work Behind the Work

Big Mike on July 29, 2026

This journal is about building a record of my “light bulb” moments. Including the one I had about how to structure and use my blog.

What I’m after

What happens to all the thinking that never makes it into a painting? I take many different journeys conceptually and intellectually and they don’t all have a direct impact on a particular piece of art. I wanted to figure out how to use this blog to capture the moments when they journeys lead to a new understanding and direction. I want to look back and trace where I have been and how I’ve arrived at where I am. Maybe someday, it will interest other people too, but that doesn’t matter.

Where i’m coming from

I’ve never been very interested in explaining my artwork. I always say, “these aren’t editorial cartoons.” They don’t need you to “get” them for me to consider them a success. They come together in a flurry of brainstorming, free associating, and contemplation mixed in with the occasional “splash of color” just to make the composition hold together better. They don’t usually tell a neat little story. They chronicle a intellectual journey I’ve taken. And just as David Burne once said about writing about music being like dancing about architecture, if I try to verbalize about what I make too much, it just kills the magic that might happen when someone else takes a look and recognizes something unique to them.

If a painting needs a page of text to make it interesting, I’ve probably missed something. I’m not illustrating someone’s philosophy and I’m not being overly clever so dwelling on a piece too much after it’s done and snapping it’s picture is enough post mortem for me. What interests me more is documenting everything that happens before the painting exists.

  • Mapping out the rabbit holes.
  • Reexamining the dead end ideas.
  • Exploring the paths I could have taken.
  • Thanking the art gods for decisions that didn’t stick.
  • Cataloging the symbols that keep showing up before I know why.
  • Reliving the writings, conversations, jokes, and minced oaths that eventually become part of the work.

If not for this, most of that would disappear. This is my attempt to keep some of it around. Not because it’s important but because it’s the secret sauce that goes into making something worth painting. And it is a treasure chest to be sorted through for more inspirations and branching ideas in unanticipated directions.

What happened

I realized I don’t want to keep a regularly cadenced journal of everyday things. I want to keep a record of discoveries. Not every path I take leads to changes in how I think. Not every idea deserves an entry. But every once in a while, a light bulb illuminates brightly through the fog my ADHD addled mind. A question gets answered or is replaced by a better question.

Those moments are worth saving, and so, here I am.

What Changed here

I stopped defaulting to thinking I need to document what I do and I realized it would be more useful to me later and more likely to motivate me now if I simply documented how my ideas evolve.

This digging deeper into the dry hole of my process will capture the sparks. The paintings are only one visible part of a much longer process that ignites them.

what to forget

  • Treating this like a traditional blog.
  • Explaining the meaning of every painting.
  • Recording conversations simply because they happened.

what to remember

Documenting the creative process as part of the artwork without becoming an explanation of it. Don’t kill the magic. Add to it.

The mission statement for this collection of thoughts will be: 

Focus on the "light bulb" moments that come about after a process of exploration and discovery. 

Anything more is just documenting dumb shit.

“Keep Digging” – Big Mike 🤗

New Work Concept Exploration: Ennui Au Jus

Big Mike on November 3, 2012

I have begun working on this new work. “Ennui Au Jus.”

We’ve all heard about combining food with other pleasurable sensory experiences like cheese and art shows, prime rib and strippers, sex and pastrami, so why not combine delicious food with a debilitating existential crisis?

Nothing in the world is quite so awful as boredom…I’m talking about finding life itself not only uninteresting but also purposeless. Existential boredom defines an inability to find not just particular things but all of life interesting. It manifests itself as a mood in which, for no reason you can articulate, nothing seems to satisfy—even things that normally do.

Alex Lickerman, M.D.

Au jus is French for “with [its own] juice”. The boredom that comes from having not purpose, no pressing need to act, no vision in our head of a future state that we mush attain, like a carrot enticing a horse to keep moving forward, can have us stewing in our warmed-over juices. We can choose to focus on happy distractions or accept that even if we find a diversion to distract us from our boredom, all we’ll have is a temporary distraction from the inevitability of a meaningless life and an insignificant death.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – End 🤗