Ron Parker - Sea to Sky

By Robert Amos November 2, 2004

} Ron Parker - Sea to Sky By Robert Amos at the Avenue Gallery, www.theavenuegallery.com 2184 Oak Bay Avenue, Victoria (250) 598-2184 October 28-November 10 Ron Parker’s large paintings are suffused with a radiant calm. The broad landscapes of our west coast which he paints are stripped to the essentials The remaining elements are presented with a bold simple stylization, creating an effect which is reminiscent of the transcendental scenes of Lawren Harris, which verge on the cosmic. Wickannish 20 x30 Yet Parker is as pragmatic and down-to-earth as can be. The deliberate images he creates result from his searching observation of the world, his paint technique which aims toward perfection, and the mental discipline which makes him stick to the program. Painting is only one of Parker’s passions. Coaching young athletes in track and field is part of his life every day. It’s clear to see that his success as an artist is due in no small measure to the discipline with which he approaches sport. “Focus your attention,” he explained, “and apply the results.” Safe Harbour 24 x 48 Parker took up painting when he was 34 years of age. Right away, his early works in the “every hair on the grizzly bear” wildlife style were taken up by the presitigious Mill Pond Press. These yielded a good income as limited edition prints for the next 15 years, but Parker could see the limits of that practice. There are no surprises in wildlife art - detail, perfection and accuracy are demanded. Parker insists his new style is not much different. “Now there is no rendering of detail, but it’s all planned.” Still, he admits, there is more room for colour. With his wildlife painting, he used basically four colours - burnt umber, ultramarine blue, payne’s gray and hooker’s green. Now he revels in vast expanses of all sorts of blue - blue sky, blue mountains, blue water. Prospect Lake 20 x 40 Parker paints with gouache, an opaque poster-paint, carried in an acrylic medium. “It’s called Jo Sonja, and it comes from Australia. The duck carvers all use it,” he told me. You can thin it with water and use it as a wash, but he likes its solid, matte finish. “With acrylic, I had to use 10 or 11 coats, but with this, three coats covers it solidly. It dries so fast that blending is difficult,” he says - but his blends of tone are faultless. He attributes this to the “patented” Robert Bateman sponge technique he uses. Clearly, Parker is an artist who is open to fresh ideas. “You have to try tons of things,” he noted, “keep on experimenting.” He then quoted sports scientist Istvan Balyi: to keep expecting different results from doing the same thing over and over again - that’s just insanity. Winter Dawn 24 x 36 I noted his new passion for simplicity. “It’s not new,” he insisted. “I’ve always been looking for what I can take out of a composition. I’m removing stuff all the time! My approach to design hasn’t changed very much from the wildlife days. I’m just doing less rendering.” And now his compositions don’t have to look “natural”. He drew my attention to the peaks in his painting of Moraine Lake in the Rockies. “In wildlife art you’d never have three identical peaks - you have to break the rythmn - 6-5-2-3-7,” he counted out, using his shorthand code for height. “Now I can go 2-2-2-2, or even 2-2-2-4! It works way better, to accentuate the rythmn and repeat the shapes.” Lowering Sky 24 x 18 Kluane 18 x 14 Freed from verisimilitude, he can go “way beyond, and really build the paintings.” These images are truly abstracted from the landscape. Parker goes beyond the surface to the essence. “If you interpret the landscape in the way people’s impressions are created” - rather than how a camera sees it - “then you’ve got it!”. Though pared to the basics, Parker’s canvases of Mystic Beach and Arbutus Cove are instantly recognizable. Most of his landscapes feature water and trees. Using a digital camera he’s constantly taking note of things like the big old arbutus trees and autumn colours of UVic. He leafed through a couple of sketchbooks, bulging with ideas for paintings. Some of them demonstrated his passion for the long winding line of a country road. Islands The artist works at a drafting table in an upstairs bedroom in his Victoria home. On his left side is a small slide projector, and the shelves around him are loaded with reference photos. Just to the other side is a single bed. “I paint for an hour at a time,” he pointed out. “I get tight up here - my neck aches from holding my head, and I have to rest.” Parker is definitely not the proverbial artist ruining his health while waiting for inspiration to strike. “You learn to organize your time,” Parker concluded, “to persevere, to work through difficulties. Pursuing athletics at a high level, you really learn how to apply yourself. You focus on some things and discard others. It helps you to decide on what’s important and, even moreso, what isn’t.” ___________________________________________ Copyright © 2004Robert Amos Robert Amos is an artist and art writer who lives in Victoria, B.C.. He can be contacted by e-mail and you can view his paintings at www.robertamos.com

• Posted: 2004-11-02