STUDIES
I decided I wanted to become an artist in about 1946 twelve years after I was born. The formal study and work on this goal after a few years of workshops, life classes and much reading about art began about ten years later when I was accepted at The Cooper Union in New York city in 1958.
After graduation from C.U. I continued with studies in workshops and more life classes but mostly with experimenting with various forms of painting. The more I experimented the more I found myself directing my interests towards geometric non-representational work. I have been working in this direction ever since. I find it to be and endless source of satisfaction and stimulation.
EXHIBITIONS:
My work has been included in many exhibitions throughout the U.S. beginning in the early ‘50s and is included in private collections.
The works in this website are examples of this idea. This description of this theory and process sounds very formal but in fact it is not. It is in fact a very open approach to creativity. One that is very open and personal to each artist. It is a personal yet universal view of, in this case, two-dimensional design. My goal is that the viewer of my paintings should have the same or similar emotional effect upon them that I experienced while creating these paintings. That juxtaposing of shapes and colors that produce this effect will stimulate conscious of subconscious activities in ones brain that excite thought. Thought activity that may be challenging, disturbing or satisfyingly pleasurable i.e. a wide range of reactions. Hopefully these images will act as an exciter to brain activity. Regardless of the background, motivation, study and theory, most of which is of little or no interest to the viewer, the bottom line is “ What you see is what you get”. Kenneth Darling
ADDENDUM
Many of these paintings can and hopefully would be reproduced in a much larger format, to have the best effect large enough to fill the peripheral vision of the viewer. Prices for these paintings and enlargements will be quoted upon request using the site mail address below. All paintings by Kenneth Darling are copyrighted in 2009 but feel free to download a copy for your personal use but no commercial use please.
RESUMé
MY ART:
Geometric abstraction [GA] works have been my main focus for many years and continues to the present. GA has a long and varied history but GA as we know it today is primarily a development of the 20th. century. Constructionism art inspired primarily by constructivist theory helped artists to define and clarify their approach to creating art. Constructivist Russian art of the early 20th. Century inspired many artists to approach their work with a radically new attitude. Artists working at this time such as, Kandinsky, Malevich, and Gabo, to name a few, were in part the inspiration for the founding of a school in the mid twenties, The Bauhaus, to further study and develop this constructivist approach to the arts. The constructivist theory, which is to work through investigation of culture, symbol systems and history as a student or learner to find new ways to produce art. The responsibility of the learner is to interact with knowledgeable society in such as examples and teachings of previous works. For me this is an ongoing study through making paintings.