4-Methylumbelliferyl Elaidate, 2006
Household gloss on canvas
198 x 218 cm
Collection of the artist

2-Methylbenzimidazole, 2008/09
Household gloss on canvas
160 x 149 cm
Collection of the artist

Hirst's first paintings featuring coloured spots were made directly on the wall, while he was a student at Goldsmiths College, London, in 1988. Twenty years later, Hirst has produced more than six hundred such paintings in house paint on canvas. No two paintings since 1988 share the same colour scheme and Hirst's rules have remained the same: colour placement is random, no colour can occur more than once, and the size of the gaps between the spots must equal the size of the spots. Like Andy Warhol, whom Hirst admires, Hirst delegates the work of making the paintings to teams of assistants.

The key concept at play in the 'spot' paintings is the potentiality for an infinite number and variety of paintings, based on size and colour of the dots and size and shape of the canvasses. They have ranged from rectangles over 40 feet long to 4-by-4 inch, with 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-inch spots as many as eighteen thousand to as few as a single half spot. All the paintings are named after pharmaceutical stimulants and narcotics, the chemical enhancers of human emotion. Yet they take the form of mechanical and unemotional Minimalist paintings. The lack of the artist's hand in the works further emphasises their detachment.