Richard Wathen

Richard Wathen is a British artist (b. 1971) based in Suffolk, UK. Wathen is known for his serene portraits of a variety of figures and animals depicted in states of repose against ethereal backgrounds of warm and cool-tone hues.

 

The figurative portraits he creates are a coalescence of autobiographical references, shown through his choices of dress, gender, colouring, and accessories, and found imagery sourced online from advertisements and old books. His compositions are carefully constructed, intricate and minimalist, displaying figures unbound by notions of identity. Portrayed in what Wathen defines as "non-space", they are instead representations of human fragility, vulnerability, and our inevitable mortality.

 

Wathen's work harnesses the stoicism of portraiture from 18th-century Britain, evoking the light palette and poetic sensibility of Thomas Gainsborough but with an eerie and unnerving atmosphere. Wathen employs the art historical tropes of portraiture from an autobiographical lens to give space to the emotive and the unfamiliar, and thus reassess the universal understanding of portraiture as a genre historically dedicated to notions of the refined and familiar individual.

 

His work is included in the MOCA Collection, Los Angeles and the Olbricht Collection, Berlin. He has been included in several solo exhibitions such as The Wait, ANOTHER Gallery, NYC (2022); Nobody wants to do nothing, 57W57Arts, NYC (2022); Works on paper, FransKasl Projects, Eindhoven, (2021), to name a few. He has also exhibited his work in many group exhibitions internationally in places such as Europe, the UK, Dubai, and New York.