Richard Wathen

Another Gallery is pleased to present The Wait, a solo exhibition of paintings by Richard Wathen.

In a new series of paintings by Richard Wathen, portraiture is plucked from its art historical thicket and set free. Likewise, figures float in space, across languid waters and teflon smooth passes of paint, which variably enshrines Wathen’s subjects in cool auras and obscures them in gentle passes of color. Somewhere else, other to our world or the referential world of painting is being portrayed. In The Wait, a brief equilibrium is elongated into a moment both unsettling and serene.

Wathen, painting with oil on linen stretched over an aluminum panel, achieves stillness with his medium. In Sleeping ambiguity is embraced. It’s unclear if a figure underneath a blanket has long been awake or is opening their eyes for the first time. So too, the ground and the space above them is a uniform block of a color. In another work, a figure reaches their hand out, presumably toward their reflection while a green substance bisects the gesture. Out of this uncanniness, the viewer is left to commune with Wathen’s subject matter and embark on an inexorable journey into their own unconscious and that which lurks inside the world of his painting.

Richard Wathen (b. 1971) is a painter based in Norfolk, England. Wathen graduated with a BA in Fine Art Painting from Winchester School of Art in 1995 and received an MA in Fine Art from the Chelsea School of Art in 1996. Wathen’s work has been exhibited in numerous shows in Europe and the United States. The Wait is Wathen’s first solo exhibition with Another Gallery.