Jonathan Wateridge’s paintings evoke a duality of familiarity and strangeness. In recent works, Wateridge melds the contemporary and the classical. Capturing moments of suspension and transition, Wateridge’s figures emerge and descend in their environments, pulsating amongst fields of colour and form. Distant interiors unfold alongside tempestuous land and seascapes, incorporating themes of the mythic and primal. The result is a painting practice grounded in anticipation, resisting pure metaphor in favor of a palpable, physical experience that connects vision, film, memory and matter.
‘‘Because obviously painting is so still, a slight statuesque awkwardness can work in a way that doesn’t as a photograph. So it’s been interesting over the years working out what I can live with and what I can’t in terms of material.’’
- Jonathan Wateridge, Uncertain Swimmer, 2023
The formal and expressive aspects of Wateridge’s style have come to the fore in recent years, as he pushes the tension between realist elements and a sense of the cinematic within the visual grammar of modernism. Each painting is heavily worked, sometimes taking many months to complete, and such changes are becoming increasingly visible on the surface of the canvases. This more fluid and expressive process has now superseded his previous affinity for building sets and hiring models; the staged theatre of his earlier work is now contained in the very making of the paintings themselves.
Jonathan Wateridge (b. 1972, Lusaka, ZM) lives and works in Norfolk (UK). His work is the subject of two monographs Uncertain Swimmer (2023) and Enclave / Expatria (2019) published by Anomie. A comprehensive publication on Wateridge’s work, diorama (2026), is available to order here.
Selected collections include Aïshti Foundation, Jal el Dib (LB); AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); Didier Casimiro, Kiev (UA); ING Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Loed Evans, London (UK); Pinault Collection, Paris (FR) and Venice (IT); Rennie Collection, Vancouver (CA); Saatchi Collection, London (UK); Simmons & Simmons, London (UK).