City of the Sun 2012

Darren Waterston's "City of the Sun" is a world within a world, painted with delicate washes. Look at how the color bleeds and settles, letting the paint do its own thing. That's process! I'm drawn to the way Waterston uses these hazy circles—they feel like looking through time, or maybe into the rings of a tree. The central ring with the silhouettes of trees and buildings looks like a memory. The whole thing feels like a strange echo chamber of images. And see that outer ring, the way the pigment is built up into this almost frilly texture? I'm thinking of Hilma af Klint and her explorations of inner worlds through abstraction. Both artists invite us to meditate on what we can't quite grasp, the spaces between seeing and knowing. It's not about answers, but about embracing the beautiful unknown.