City of the Sun 2012

Darren Waterston built the *City of the Sun* using watercolor, oil, and ink on paper. I can imagine Waterston, patiently layering thin washes of color, letting the pigment bleed and bloom. Look how the concentric circles ripple outwards in delicate, feathery lines of red. Those edges, are they controlled or accidental? I feel the artist’s hand in them, trying to make something both precise and ethereal. And at the center: a tiny, silhouetted city, a dark band against the light, like a memory or a premonition. It’s as if Waterston is charting a cosmos, both interior and exterior. I’m thinking of Hilma af Klint, whose paintings of swirling forms tried to capture spiritual truths. Artists like Klint and Waterston share this impulse: to create something that is both seen and felt, a site of ongoing contemplation and wonder.