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ABOUT MY WORK, ALL, BEING AN ARTIST Leslie Parke ABOUT MY WORK, ALL, BEING AN ARTIST Leslie Parke

OPTIMIZING YOUR ARTIST WEBSITE FOR SEO SUCCESS

I’ve been dealing with having an artist website since the days of dial-up. No matter how beautiful your site is, or how much work you have done on it, no one is going to see it if you don’t pay attention to how you website is found and recommended in the search engines. This part of my job makes my eyes bleed, but I have finally decided to tackle the nemesis of SEO.

This is what I have learned so far.

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ALL, ABOUT MY WORK ALL, ABOUT MY WORK

FINDING CREATIVITY IN THE DARK: A Story of Resilience and Art

I lost the use of both thumbs and my hands were in splints for several months.

I knew that my ability to paint was not just in my hands, nor was I the first artist to face this limitation. Renoir suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and his brush had to be strapped to his hand. Chuck Close became a quadriplegic but regained use of his arms. He, too, strapped his brush to his hand and paints, sometimes guiding the right hand with his left.

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ABOUT MY WORK, ALL ABOUT MY WORK, ALL

CONTINUOUS FLOW: A Year of Artistic Exploration

Over the last year I have had several versions of an exhibition that I call, Continuous Flow. The first in Boston at Soprafina Gallery, the second and largest at SUNY Oneonta, and in April, a third at Gremillion and Company, Fine Art, Inc. in Houston, Texas.

These shows came at an interesting time for me. In 2017, as I was preparing for these exhibitions, I lost use of my hands for six months. I had double trigger thumbs, which meant I could not bend my thumbs, write my name, or hold a brush. What to do? I kept working.

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ABOUT MY WORK, ALL Leslie Parke ABOUT MY WORK, ALL Leslie Parke

THE QUEEN’S SKIRT: A Reflection on Power and Privilege

One day I was moving paintings in the "gallery space" of my studio  and I heard the words, "French Revolution". We had just been through a long spate of Trump tantrums and I believe it was that, as much as anything, that brought the French Revolution to mind. I love French history, and while I haven't studied the Revolution in many years, I spent the afternoon in a revery of free association. I was working on some large paintings that are mostly abstract, but with a representational association. And I was using a lot of metallic paint. I decided that I wanted to paint one of those wide, diaphanous skirts worn by Marie-Antoinette

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ABOUT MY WORK, ALL Leslie Parke ABOUT MY WORK, ALL Leslie Parke

FROM FARM TO CANVAS: Painting the Rural Landscape Slant

I live in a very rural part of New York State surrounded by farms. The landscape influences my work, but not always in the ways you might imagine. I pass this farm on a back road to the next town. I have stopped a few times to photograph it. What I really love is how the corn crib looks in front of the silo. It is a curved grid in front of a curved grid. In this photo it appears quite abstract. I love a subject that is completely real and seems completely abstract.

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ABOUT MY WORK, ALL Leslie Parke ABOUT MY WORK, ALL Leslie Parke

THE GRID PROJECT - PART THREE : Translating into Paint

From the start, I knew that I wanted to make paintings from the broken television "grid" photographs, but they posed a lot of technical difficulties. To begin with,  I paint in oils. Making a clean stripe in oil is more difficult than with acrylic paint. With acrylics you can mask out your stripes with tape and then seal it with a clear acrylic layer, then add your color and it won't bleed. That pretty much insures that you will have a sharp edge.

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ABOUT MY WORK, ALL Leslie Parke ABOUT MY WORK, ALL Leslie Parke

ABSTRACT OR REPRESENTATIONAL : Depends on the Source of the Light

My paintings are about  light.

When I paint representationally and I am about the business of rendering light, I often choose a subject that is backlit. It seems to offer the most extensive and complex qualities of light - light on a surface, passing through a surface, reflecting off of a surface, often highlighting transparency, translucency, reflection, or glitter.

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ABOUT MY WORK, ALL ABOUT MY WORK, ALL

18TH CENTURY JAPANESE SCREEN

Several years ago as I crossed the Mall in Washington on my way back to my hotel, I decided I had to duck into the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, part of the Smithsonian, and see the Asian work there. On display was the Price Collection, on loan from Los Angeles. The first piece I saw as I entered the exhibition was "Pine and Plum Trees in Snowstorm" by Katsu Jagyoku, the 18th Century Japanese artist.

The room was dimmed and soft light fell on an enormous screen with branches and falling snow. I felt completely enveloped by the piece. I had both a calm and emotional response to it, a feeling that has stayed with me to this day.

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ABOUT MY WORK, ALL ABOUT MY WORK, ALL

THE PRINT PROJECT AND IT’S AFTERMATH

Several years ago I decided that I wanted to do a set of lithographs based on a painting I did of an almond tree.  Having never made a lithograph before I thought I'd share the process with you and get your input along the way.

I made 4-plate lithograph, that I printed in different colors to represent different times of the day.  

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ABOUT MY WORK, ALL ABOUT MY WORK, ALL

LIVING INSIDE A PAINTING : The Bonnard Apartment

Even a child needs a room of her own. Mine was a square of light on the floor of the living room. At dawn, I opened one of my parent’s two art books and placed it in the square. The dust lit by the eastern morning light swirled before me as I squatted akimbo; my knees bent flat to the floor in the shape of an M. I leaned my torso forward and pressed my face into the color reproductions of Fifty Centuries of Art. Here in the tiny landscapes behind Roger Van Der Weyden’s Madonna and the curtained Dutch rooms of Vermeer, worlds opened up to me that are at once more vivid and appealing than the one I lived in.

Like Alice, I longed to be on the other side. I wanted to live inside a painting.

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