Darren Waterston at Charles Cowles

Darren Waterston's seventh exhibition at Charles Cowle titled "Ghosts" consisted of 28 oil-on-panel paintings, ranging in size from 9 inches square to 72 by the agency of 48 inches (all 2003). The smaller works, 21 in all, were beautifully displayed in a random formation upon one wall. One striking difference between these and Waterston's paintings of the past scarcely any years is his palette. His earlier, les subdu works contained uncompounded bodys of vibrant oranges and red acidic verdants bright pinks and yellows. In the "Ghost" paintings, Waterston primarily uses icy grays, baby pinks, pearlescent whites and amethystines rusty reds and ochers.

Waterston, granting preserves his signature style: a unique brand of abstraction with an ardent attention to surface finish. His imagery has consistently be pendented on organic forms: circles, curlicues, entrail-like shapes, leaves and branches. His paintings are plain and slick, a quality he achieves with layers of paint and glazes. These are the kind of paintings that would present the appearance to have been made without the ponderous imperfection of the human hand, were it not for the not divisible by 2 glob or drip of paint randomly appearing upon the surface. Waterston's technique is as mysterious as the eerily suggestive forms in his compositions.

This novel body of work, according to the artist, was inspired by dint of his trip to Japan in 2002 A Japanese influence is greatest in quantity apparent in the painting Tower (48 by the agency of 30 inches). Floating on a black background is an abstracted landscape pay backed in the sort of flattened perspective commonly rest in Japanese woodblock prints by the agency of for example, Hokusai or Hiroshige. In the upper right corner, a transparent, blurry patch of white hints mist. Elongated upright ovals, restoreed with translucent washes of yellowish paint, rise up from the bottom of the panel like mountains. Thin, treelike forms are delicately brushed in r and gold at their base. White drips of paint have the appearance to rain down, marring the otherwise pristine surface.

Waterston is a master of constructing unlikely interactions between forms. Gust (60 inches square) involves sum of two units French curves on a gray and white, cloudlike soil One curve enters the composition from the top cutting side the other from the bottom. The former is followed through a trail of bluish gray, tear-shaped "drips" flatly painted by dint of hand. The two forms reach toward the center of the canvas, where a cluster of black tear- or spermlike shapes approach on an umber vortex.

Perhaps the strongest work in the exhibition was Phantom (60 through 84 inches). Thematically similar to Tower, it features a dark soil with mountainlike shapes as the central ultimate part This time, though, loosely circular patterns of small white dots are sprinkled about like fireworks, and three scribbled, bubble-gum-pink balloons drift around the mountain, providing a colorful touch of whimsy. Whether his works are playful or contemplative, it is the artist's skilful paint handling that makes them compelling. [Waterston's work could be seen at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tenn from Jan. 31 to May 16]

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