The work, which Parker said is best described as “urgent visual triage,” is a part of his first show in a “couple years.”
“I often start with an idea but almost always that doesn't last but a few seconds, right?” Said Parker. “And you put a big old brush load of paint down, and you're off and running. It’s urgent. And each mark predicts the next, and the next thing you know, something emerges.”
This exhibit is only one part of the longstanding artist’s career. Parker’s artistic journey begins in Topeka, Kansas in his high school art classroom.
“I always was interested in art. You know, I loved making things. [But] I got kicked out of my art class in high school on the first day,” describes Parker. “Went in — this old teacher. God, she was something else. Been doing it for about 80 years, I think. And she says, 'all right, I want to see who can draw.' And she says, 'I'll be the model,' and so we all drew.”
“She came by my easel, and she slapped the ruler down on my knuckles. And she says, ‘you remember that the human figure is eight heads tall, and don't you ever forget it.’ Apparently, [I] made the head a little too big, so I tried it again, and this time I drew Miss Hanley and I with a stack of eight severed heads right next to her. She saw that stack of severed heads and threw me out of class.”
Despite this encounter, Parker continued to pursue his interest in art.
Shortly after high school he became a jeweler, then decided to go to college for architecture at University of Oklahoma. He decided architecture “wasn’t for him” and so he returned to Topeka and finished his undergraduate at Washburn University.
From there, he went to graduate school at the University of Iowa and studied painting. He was then called into the Air Force where he learned banjo and was soon discharged in Paris.
“I stayed another year and painted and played music on the street to support myself and played cowboy songs for the French people," he said. "They loved it.”
Parker finished his graduate degree and began teaching. He taught at Wisconsin State-Whitewater and started a school of fine arts. He went to New York and taught at NYU, took a break from teaching, lived in California then worked at Missouri State. After a year, he was offered a job at Drury University as chairman of the department and was tasked with starting a school of architecture.
Among all of these accolades, Parker also taught at Bard College and the École du Louvre in Paris. He met Thomas Hart Benton in the 50s, and Benton showed him acrylic painting. He also owned a farm.
Now, Parker said he has “gave up the idea of working for the man,” even if the man is him. “I like to be free at every moment during the process to take advantage of the accidents that happen. Sometimes the best paintings just happen really quickly, and, you know, you paint on it for a couple of hours and you got something good and you can't let it go.”
Parker continues to play music as well as to paint, but on his own terms.
He plays at Joe’s Gathering Place every Monday night from 6 to 9:30 p.m. with a house band and creates “abstract paintings [that are] not really abstract paintings.” He described them as “loose” and about his “reaction to landscape” and utilizing that of “the pictorial space of landscape.”
Parker’s exhibition of 18 new acrylic paintings will be open to the public for viewing through February 28 at Obelisk Gallery, 214 W. Phelps St. in Springfield, MO.
