It was 20 Years Ago...

 

At the beginning of the 21^st century, young Darlington was really into abstract painting not to mention ultimate frisbee and beer. Ok, so I was doing a lot of abstract paintings in the evenings while during the day I would spend most of my time at the lab working on the PhD. Don't try to hard to understand this painting, I have no recollection of its meaning, and made up the title last year when I catalogued my oeuvre to date. Oeuvre is a fancy way of saying big pile of paintings.

Decipher Me, watercolour 7 x 11" cold press, 2002 (No. 1349a)

 

This one follows the form of the blue sky, with swirling whirling noodles and other organic shapes. I used the colour scheme rules learned in high school, blue with orange and red with green. The shade of blue is interesting, it looks like cerulean (PB35) with some antwerp blue (PB27) which I had at the time. All of these paintings were named and numbered as I did the catalogue.

Detached Retina (Blue Sky), watercolour 7 x 11" cold press, 2002 (No. 1349b)

 

I experimented with a lot of different techniques in the 2000's, like the colour splash. My signature also changed a lot, here it is the version with all caps printed out. This painting reminds me of a bowling ball hitting pins in an alley, Halloween style. The work was carefully done with good modelling of shapes. I was mostly trying to hide the brush strokes in smooth-appearing surfaces. I like how the yellow light permeated the gloomy greys.

Splatter Matter With Trees, watercolour 7 x 11" cold press, 2001 (No. 1353a)

 

These paintings would have been done completely on the spot, that is, no planning, no doodles. I would not get into doodleism until the following years. Often I would combine completely abstract shapes with a few easy to recognize items like trees, or in this case bubbles.

Pastel Forms and Formula, watercolour 7 x 11" cold press, 2001 (No. 1353B)

 

The layering in this painting gives it a sense of depth and internal warmth. Earlier in the blog I talked about colour schemes, but most of the time I went with gut instinct. In this case it worked out, the combination of yellow, orange, maroon and pink plays well against the splash of grey and green. In due time I will get back to these styles of painting, for now I am content to work on the landscapes on location, at least when the rain stops!

Internal Levers, watercolour 5.5 x 7.5" hot press 300lb, 2000 (No. 1354)