Published by Spirit of St Barth
Editor: Sébastien Martinon
Edition N°13 - 2026 (Pages 54-57)
Dec 11, 2025

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Jason Bereswill Falling Designer, 2025, Oil on canvas, 

60 x 48 in (152.4 x 121.92 cm)

Jason Bereswill (b. 1980, New York City) is a contemporary artist known for his vibrant landscape paintings that immerse the viewer in the colors, light, and energy of nature’s most powerful settings. Bereswill earned a BFA from the Ringling College of Art and Design in 2002, followed by an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2005. Jason Bereswill fell for the island of St Barths upon his first landing in 2005 and has painted its landscape over the past 20 years.

In his most recent collection on view at Space Gallery this winter, the paintings focus primarily on the figure, set on a staged bluff composed of assorted parts of the island - various waters, skies and a recurring piece of rocky peak from the island's western tip in Colombier. Of this new series of falling figures, Bereswill describes them in the Memento Mori tradition, intended to remind the viewer of the fleeting nature of life. By animating them in a darkly humorous arrangement of vacation clumsiness, the falls highlight the ambition and folly of the human animal on an island where soaring heights and epic crashes are equally possible.

“We all fall for something - we fall in love with, we fall prey to, we fall into the abyss of obsession. These obsessions define our lives. If we take a moment to think about all the hopes, dreams, and heartbreak, careers and lives made and broken on this island over the years, one starts to understand the compelling story there.”
 

Bereswill’s mastery of brushstrokes, combined with his obsessive attention to detail, captures the sublime power of nature while simultaneously exploring humanity’s complex relationship with it.

The paintings directly record the artist’s ‘hand’ in pen-and-ink and oil on canvas. Falling Designer features jewelry by his friend Brent Neale including a piece that the artist and his wife own.

Falling Paparazzo comes out of a scene Bereswill experienced early on in his time on St Barths, encountering paparazzi perched precariously in bushes on a hillside high above Shell Beach. (The artist’s father was also a photojournalist.) Sandy depicts his wife, Jane, kicking the fine beachy material through the air. Pipe Dream, in a playful reference to Goya’s Drowning Dog (1819), pictures the artist’s dog, Martha, wiping out on a wave. (Martha is a 70lb bulldog. She can’t swim; she sinks; but she’s continuously drawn to water despite her design.)

Bereswill’s paintings can be found in numerous significant private and public collections including the Hall Foundation, the Museo Jumex, the National Gallery of Bermuda, the Oketa Collection, and the Maezawa Collection among others. He is the co-founder of the Martha MOCA artist residency in Lambertville, NJ.

Jason Bereswill Falling Artist, 2024, Oil on canvas, 

60 x 48 in (152.4 x 121.92 cm)