Artist: Michael Parkes
|
Profile: Michael Parkes is America's leading Magic Realist painter and printmaker.
Though he studied graphic art and painting at the University
of Kansas, his unique style evolved very much in isolation,
after a period in which he gave up the practice of art altogether
and went off to India in search of philosophical illumination:
born in 1944, he was very much of the hippie generation.
Earlier on, he had painted in the generally Abstract Expressionist
style normal among his teachers, but after his pause for reflection
he began to draw and paint in a meticulous style of detailed
representation which would enable him to give full expression
to his inner world of images. The style was in principle realistic,
the subject matter magical, and Magic Realism has characterised
his work ever since.
He has studied deeply in esoteric doctrine of the East and
the West, and his imagery is drawn from a range of wisdoms
including the Cabalistic and the Tantric, but embodied in forms
from his own imagination which are immediately accessible.
Here strange beasts encounter mysterious winged women, good
and evil fight out their immemorial conflict (though who can
be perfectly sure which is which?), and in this weightless
environment worlds are unmade and remade nearer to the heart's
desire. |
|
|