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Darren Waterston The Gathering, 2024

Darren Waterston
The Gathering, 2024
Oil on wood panel
72 x 60 inches

Darren Waterston Hillside, 2024

Darren Waterston
Hillside, 2024
Oil on wood panel
48 x 36 inches

Darren Waterston Transfiguration, 2024

Darren Waterston
Transfiguration, 2024
Oil on wood panel
72 x 60 inches

Darren Waterston Sonata Form, 2024

Darren Waterston
Sonata Form, 2024
Oil on wood panel
48 x 36 inches

Darren Waterston Field 1, 2024

Darren Waterston
Field 1, 2024
Oil on wood panel
18 x 18 inches

Darren Waterston Field 2, 2024

Darren Waterston
Field 2, 2024
Oil on wood panel
18 x 18 inches

Darren Waterston Field 3, 2024

Darren Waterston
Field 3, 2024
Oil on wood panel
18 x 18 inches

Darren Waterston Field 4, 2024

Darren Waterston
Field 4, 2024
Oil on wood panel
18 x 18 inches

Darren Waterston Field 5, 2024

Darren Waterston
Field 5, 2024
Oil on wood panel
18 x 18 inches

Darren Waterston From Where She Stood, 2024

Darren Waterston
From Where She Stood, 2024
Oil on wood panel
48 x 18 inches

Darren Waterston Landscape and Memory, 2024

Darren Waterston
Landscape and Memory, 2024
Oil on wood panel
48 x 48 inches

Darren Waterston Metamorphose Trilogy 1, 2024

Darren Waterston
Metamorphose Trilogy 1, 2024
Oil on wood panel
36 x 36 inches

Darren Waterston Metamorphose Trilogy 2, 2024

Darren Waterston
Metamorphose Trilogy 2, 2024
Oil on wood panel
36 x 36 inches

Darren Waterston Cyclops Dreaming, 2020

Darren Waterston
Cyclops Dreaming, 2020
Oil on wood panel
36 x 18 inches

Darren Waterston Metamorphose Trilogy 3, 2024

Darren Waterston
Metamorphose Trilogy 3, 2024
Oil on wood panel
36 x 36 inches

Darren Waterston Aureus Fields, 2024

Darren Waterston
Aureus Fields, 2024
Oil on wood panel
48 x 18 inches

Darren Waterston The Shape of Sky, 2024

Darren Waterston
The Shape of Sky, 2024
Oil on wood panel
48 x 36 inches

Darren Waterston Bourne, 2024

Darren Waterston
Bourne, 2024
Oil on wood panel
48 x 18 inches

Darren Waterston Chimera (wave), 2024

Darren Waterston
Chimera (wave), 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
13 1/4 x 30 inches

Darren Waterston Commotion of the Bees, 2024

Darren Waterston
Commotion of the Bees, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
8 3/4 x 36 inches

Darren Waterston Dawn, 2024

Darren Waterston
Dawn, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
25 1/4 x 20 1/2 inches

Darren Waterston Deep Night, 2024

Darren Waterston
Deep Night, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
22 1/4 x 38 inches

Darren Waterston Hemlock, 2024

Darren Waterston
Hemlock, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
11 1/4 x 33 1/4 inches

Darren Waterston Owl Dreaming, 2024

Darren Waterston
Owl Dreaming, 2024
Watercolor on rag paper
12 x 9 inches

Darren Waterston Ophelia, 2024

Darren Waterston
Ophelia, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
20 3/4 x 17 3/4 inches

Darren Waterston Radiant Landscape, 2024

Darren Waterston
Radiant Landscape, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
21 x 37 inches

Darren Waterston Low Humm, 2024

Darren Waterston
Low Humm, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
29 1/4 x 22 inches

Darren Waterston Illumination Study 1, 2024

Darren Waterston
Illumination Study 1, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
15 3/4 x 11 1/2 inches

Darren Waterston Illumination Study 2, 2024

Darren Waterston
Illumination Study 2, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
16 x 12 inches

Darren Waterston Phoenix Study, 2024

Darren Waterston
Phoenix Study, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
12 x 9 inches

Darren Waterston Yearning, 2024

Darren Waterston
Yearning, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
16 x 12 inches

Darren Waterston The Moon is a Girl, 2024

Darren Waterston
The Moon is a Girl, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
19 3/4 x 13 3/4 inches

Darren Waterston Where I Found You, 2024

Darren Waterston
Where I Found You, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper
6 5/8 x 43 1/2 inches

Press Release

Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present A Life in Fields, an exhibition of recent paintings and works on paper by American artist Darren Waterston. This show marks Waterston’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The show will be on view from May 2 through June 13, 2024. The gallery will host a reception for the artist on Thursday, May 2, from 5 to 7 PM. The gallery will also host an artist walkthrough on Friday, May 3, at 3 PM. 

Darren Waterston’s A Life in Fields envisions the landscape genre as an enigmatic investigation of human consciousness. Through symphonic sweeps of color, Waterston creates “devotional” paintings and works on paper that rely on the sublime to survey the human psyche. Each painting embraces the unresolved nature of conscious experience, using color as a stepping stone towards investigating our psychological interiorities.

Describing this body of works as “palette-driven,” Waterston experiments with bursts of explosive color—crystalline cyans, mossy greens, and hot pinks—that mirror the complexities of an inner psychological world, refracting emotion and sensation through color. Colors are paired to exist slightly outside the purview of visual accord, demonstrating Waterston’s ongoing interest in beauty and terror’s reciprocity. The colors further evoke this spectral symbiosis: bruisy mauves suggest viscerality, working as a bridge between the sensory and the psychological; golds recall alchemy, evincing both overindulgence and regeneration; the scarlet flashes in Field 2 and Metamorphose Trilogy 1 could be read as expressions of passion or carnage. Because Waterston considers the paintings complete only with the viewer’s experience of the work, the ultimate interpretation is reflexive and interdependent, homed in the viewer’s perception and relationship to the work both as text and object.

Waterston’s paintings trace their genealogy through several avenues of art history, borrowing from the technique and iconography of Northern Renaissance painters, as well as the Surrealists and Symbolists. Waterston’s process is rooted firmly in the history of painting, underwritten by his use of traditional preparation and oil glazing methods. He begins by applying rabbit skin glue and genuine gesso to the panel, reapplying and abrading layers tirelessly before underpainting with bole, a clay pigment traditionally used by Renaissance painters to warm gold leaf. He also incorporates abstracted iconography into his artworks, such as the oculus (Hemlock, Bourne, and Low Humm), further hinting at the spiritual and visceral experience of roaming his dreamscapes.

Darren Waterston has been exhibiting his paintings, works on paper, and installations in the U.S. and abroad since the early 1990s. Waterston’s artwork is included in numerous permanent collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; New York Public Library, New York City; The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He graduated with a BFA from the Otis Art Institute in 1988, having previously studied at the Akademie der Künste and the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, both in Germany. Waterston currently lives and works in Kinderhook, New York.

A Life in Fields, May 2 – June 13, 2024. On view at 10 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. Images and previews are available upon request. For all inquiries, please contact the gallery by phone (415) 781- 4629 or by email info@berggruen.com.