At the Margin: London

26 February - 27 March 2026
  • JD Malat is pleased to present At the Margin, a solo exhibition by Darren Reid. The exhibition brings together landscapes, coastal views, and urban scenes that appear documentary in clarity yet are charged by scale, distance, and atmosphere, positioning the viewer in a state of watchfulness where space, light, and equilibrium quietly converge.
  • Darren Reid, Sentinel, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Darren Reid Cologne Bridge, 2007 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 48 in 152.4 x 121.9 cm (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Darren Reid, Highlands, 2022 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Darren Reid, Sentinel, 2025
  • The Human within vastness

    Darren Reid, Highlands, 2022, Acrylic on panel, 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in, 100 x 100 cm

    The Human within vastness

    Darren Reid constructs scenes of striking clarity that feel at once immediate and suspended. Landscapes, coastlines, bridges, and city streets unfold with measured precision, where the human figure—present yet rarely central—serves as a point of calibration within vast spatial fields. In works such as Précipice and Headland, expanses of snow, sea, and sky do not overwhelm but structure perception itself. Scale becomes a threshold through which distance, exposure, and stillness are registered. 
  • Between Narrative and Form

    Darren Reid, Headland, 2025, Acrylic on panel, 51 1/8 x 31 1/2 in, 130 x 80 cm

    Between Narrative and Form

    Reid’s realism is disciplined rather than nostalgic. Influenced by the compositional rigour of Holbein and the lucid atmospheres of Hopper and Wyeth, he approaches painting as an act of sustained looking. Surfaces remain clean, light controlled, gesture restrained.  Each work holds a moment in equilibrium—poised between narrative suggestion and formal clarity—where spectacle gives way to watchfulness, and observation becomes a contemplative state.
  • Darren Reid (b. 1971, Derby)

    Darren Reid, Notting Hill, 2023, Acrylic on panel, 25 5/8 x 43 1/4 in, 65 x 110 cm

    Darren Reid (b. 1971, Derby)

    Darren Reid is a self-taught artist specialising in realist painting. Drawing scenes by hand, Reid’s emerging style and technical rigour has been influenced by artists such as Caravaggio and Holbein, alongside 20th Century painters such as Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. Executing his paintings in acrylic, Reid works with an intricate craftsmanship through fine brushwork. Reid credits his attraction to realist landscapes for their potential to render a scene “so perfectly in paint” and the style’s documentary value. His allure to the narrative quality of realism is encapsulated by his choice in subject matter which largely references his local environment.