Like geodes, those hollow rocks lined with crystals that enchant children of all ages, San Francisco artist Darren Waterston's prints, watercolors, and oil paintings give a glimpse of hidden worlds. Shapes that resemble trees, stars, flowers, or mesas float like Rorschach blots on a watery background. These shapes may merely be our own anthropocentric hallucinations, but they're so suffused with mystic light that they feel like visions. In his most recent work, Waterston sets off his translucent organic pigments with calligraphic black lines. The result is a haiku — terse, aphoristic, and beautifully puzzling.
