Darren Waterston American, b. 1965

Darren Waterston (b.1965) is known for his ethereal paintings and immersive installations that evoke geological, botanical, and celestial associations. Moving fluidly between abstraction and representation, and drawing on historical practices, Waterston illusionistically portrays investigations of the human psyche and the spectres of emotion and experience.

Darren Waterston has been exhibiting his paintings, works on paper, and installations in the U.S. and abroad since the early 1990s. Recent exhibition highlights include: Darren Waterston’s Filthy Lucre: Whistler’s Peacock Room Reimagined at Victoria and Albert Museum (2020); Peacock Room REMIX: Darren Waterston’s Filthy Lucre at The Smithsonian Institution’s Freer/Sackler Galleries (2016); Uncertain Beauty at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (2014); Forest Eater at The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu (2011); and Splendid Grief: The Afterlife of Leland Stanford Jr. (2009), an installation at The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, CA.  

In 2007 CHARTA published a monograph on the artist, Darren Waterston: Representing the Invisible, and in 2013 Prestel published a collaboration between the artist and poet Mark Doty, A Swarm, A Flock, a Host: A Compendium of Creatures. Darren Waterston: Filthy Lucre, was published by Skira Rizzoli in association with MASS MoCA and the Freer/Sackler in 2014. In 2020 Victoria and Albert Museum published Darren Waterston’s Filthy Lucre: Whistler’s Peacock Room Reimagined.

Waterston’s artwork is in numerous permanent collections including a site-specific mural at The Frick Collection, New York; 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.