Darren Waterston (born 1965) is an American artist who is mainly known for his ethereal paintings.

Early life and education

Waterson was born in California in 1965. He received his BFA at the

Otis Art Institute Otis College of Art and Design is a Private university, private Art school, art and design school in Los Angeles, California, United States. Established in 1918, it was the city's first independent professional school of art. The main campus is l ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

in 1988. From 1986-87 he studied at the

Akademie der Künste The Academy of Arts () is a state arts institution in Berlin, Germany. The task of the Academy is to promote art, as well as to advise and support the states of Germany. The academy's predecessor organization was founded in 1696 by Elector F ...

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

and ''Kunstakademie Münster - Hochschule für Bildende Künste'' in

Münster Münster (; ) is an independent city#Germany, independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a ...

, Germany.

Works

In 2011, Waterston finished ''Forest Eater'', which comprised approximately fifty paintings and works on paper and four site-specific sculptures. The largest of the sculptures is "Wrath", a forbidding eighteen-foot long vertical lava formation, which hung from the museum's ceiling. The project was conceived specifically for the Honolulu Contemporary Art Museum.

Filthy Lucre

''Filthy Lucre'' presents a

dystopia A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmen ...

n version of ''

The Peacock Room ''Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room'' (better known as ''The Peacock Room'') is a work of interior decorative art created by James McNeill Whistler and Thomas Jeckyll, translocated to the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Whis ...

'',

James McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral a ...

's 1876 decorative masterpiece. Waterston's work, like ''The Peacock Room'', probes and considers the conflation of painting, architecture, patronage, and artistic ego. The project was conceived specifically for the

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex located in North Adams, Massachusetts. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing ...

and first exhibited in 2014. In May 2015, it opened at the

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., focusing on Culture of Asia, Asian art. The Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the Uni ...

, while ''The Peacock Room'' of the adjoining

Freer Gallery of Art The Freer Gallery of Art is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. focusing on Asian art. The Freer and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. The Freer and ...

undergoes renovation.

Critical reception

Of ''The Flowering: The Fourfold Sense'', DeWitt Cheng wrote: "Darren Waterston’s older paintings were lyrical misty landscapes with silhouetted flora and fauna. His newer works, symbolist abstractions, become mindscapes in which ambiguous transparent forms arise, float, flutter, and sink amid mist, clouds, swirls, drips, and vermicular coils of brushstrokes; each image with its poetic cycles of life represents the cosmos as 'a divine chaos.'" Sue Taylor wrote: "Adept at a myriad of fluid effects, Waterston is a virtuosic colorist as well, enlivening the palest mauve and power-blue fogs with passages of burning orange or hot pink. In these apocalyptic dreams, he imagines flashing, otherworldly realms at the brink of consciousness." Of Waterston's exhibition ''Last Days'', Regina Hackett, a

Seattle Post-Intelligencer The ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' (popularly known as the ''Seattle P-I'', the ''Post-Intelligencer'', or simply the ''P-I'') is an online newspaper and former print newspaper based in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington, United States. Th ...

art critic, wrote: "If there's a more imitated painter in America than Darren Waterston, I can't imagine who it would be. Waterston's silky rot and colored goo are gorgeous. They imply a world in which the air has evolved to carry a weightless and more sophisticated kind of consciousness. Working in oils on panel, Waterston creates worlds inside the world, what Gerald Manley Hopkins' described in ''God's Grandeur'': 'Because the Holy Ghost over the bent/ World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.' In the current exhibit, titled ''Last Days,'' Waterston merges beauty with blight. He paints starlight inside a cave, roots in the air, and minerals dissolving into liquids. 'Fallen' features a hollowed-out and free-floating tree trunk. White orchids with stale, shadowed edges hang suspended under fragments of enameled blue sky."

Selected books and catalogues

*Baas, Jacquelynn et al. ''Darren Waterston: Representing the Invisible''. Milan: Edizioni Charta, *Baas, Jacquelynn. ''Material, Immaterial: Waterston's Ghosts'', New York: Charles Cowles Gallery *Burton, Tim and Carmine Iannaccone. ''Darren Waterston: Paintings''. Los Angeles: Kohn Turner Gallery, 2000 *Clothier, Peter. ''In the Reeds and the Rushes'', Fresno, CA: The Fresno Art Museum, 1999 *Cross, Susan et al. ''Darren Waterston: Filthy Lucre''. New York, Skira Rizzoli, 2014 *Doty, Mark and Darren Waterston. ''A Swarm, A Flock, A Host: A Compendium of Creatures''. New York: Prestel, 2013, *Gamblin, Noriko. ''Darren Waterston''. New York: Charles Cowles Gallery, 1997 *Gamblin, Noriko. ''Elegies'', Long Beach, CA: Long Beach Museum of Art, 1992 *Khalip, Jacques. ''Darren Waterston: Split the Lark''. New York, DC Moore Gallery, 2014 *Kimball, Cathy. ''Was and Is Not and Is to Come'', San Jose, CA: San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, 2007 *Pagel, David. ''Hyle''. Paris: Galerie Jean-Luc and Takako Richard, 2006 *Robinson, James et al. ''Darren Waterston's Filthy Lucre: Whistler's Peacock Room Reimagined''. London, V&A Publishing, 2020 *Voorhies, James. ''Darren Waterston: Remote Futures''. New York: DC Moore Gallery, 2012 *Waterston, Darren and Tyrus Miller. ''The Flowering (The Fourfold Sense)''. Portland, OR: Lewis & Clark College, 2007 *Weissman, Benjamin, and Amy Gerstler, ''Darren Waterston'', Los Angeles: St. Ann's Press, 2001

References

External links

* * *
Darren Waterston – Inman Gallerywww.darrenwaterston.com – official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Waterston, Darren 1965 births American installation artists Living people 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists Otis College of Art and Design alumni Painters from California American contemporary painters 20th-century American male artists