Insignificant Details

This paiting despite it's name contains a lot of details, some of which I would say are significant. I will not say which details mean what, instead I prefer to let the viewer 'figure it out'. As always though, the relationship between artist and viewer is fraught with ambiguities in interpretation. Maybe it should stay that way, kind of like a Magician who doesn't share the secrets to his tricks, although these days you can go on the internet and find out just about anything including how magicians do their tricks, and apparently now, how Darlington does his watercolours.

With that segway, let's think about how I did this one... the doodleism technique has been in my repertoire for several years now, the first one probably sometime in 2003. As I read some of the old blogs I made an interesting find in how my thinking has changed. Originally to do this technique, I went through my old notes (which are always filled with doodles done during lab meetings and presentation... I swear I was paying attention the whole time though), and from those small doodles I would select the best ones to compose a design. The change somewhere along the way was that I stopped being selective about the doodles and instead forced myself to use every doodle in the book. As matter of design this creates a lot of interesting problems... if you inspect the painting above you will see several different horizon lines and discrepant perspectives, this is me trying to fit together completely different drawings into a single landscape. In the end though I think it makes a very intersting contrast. To give away a small tidbit, I will say that there a number of elements of this design that are physically connected with some degree of intent of meaning. I'll let the critics figure the rest out.

22x30" cold press. 2011