Darren Waterston's seventh exhibition at Charles Cowle titled "Ghosts" consisted of 28 oil-on-panel paintings.

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 way of 48 inches (all 2003). The smaller works, 21 in all, were beautifully displayed in a random formation onward 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 news bright pinks and yellows. In the "Ghost" paintings, Waterston primarily uses icy grays, baby pinks, pearlescent whites and ceruleans rusty reds and ochers.

Waterston, yet 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 assume to have been made without the unhandy imperfection of the human hand, were it not for the remaining glob or drip of paint randomly appearing forward the surface. Waterston's technique is as mysterious as the eerily suggestive forms in his compositions.

This of the present day body of work, according to the artist, was inspired through his trip to Japan in 2002 A Japanese influence is in the greatest degree apparent in the painting Tower (48 by the agency of 30 inches). Floating on a black background is an abstracted landscape presented in the sort of flattened perspective commonly institute 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, giveed 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 appear to rain down, marring the otherwise pristine surface.

Waterston is a master of constructing unlikely interactions between forms. Gust (60 inches square) involves brace French curves on a gray and white, cloudlike country One curve enters the composition from the top verge the other from the bottom. The former is followed by way of a trail of bluish gray, tear-shaped "drips" flatly painted at 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 domain with mountainlike shapes as the central uncompounded body 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 dab 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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