Rory Parks and Paradise Lost

Rory Parks Installation, NYC

Rory Parks is painter as all things. He is at once artist, author, architect, and engineer. He is poet, philosopher, tinkerer, dreamer, and inventor. He is stage director, stage designer, stage setter and stage driver. He is distracted, head in the clouds, and sleeves rolled up, laser focused. He is composer and conductor and orchestra and soloist and more.

Big Orange Projector (Jukebox), oil on canvas, 89”x21”, 2010

He has always known when something he was painting felt just right. That, ah yes, that'll do. He has that kind of sensibility. That kind of intelligence. That kind of natural talent, genius and ability. A deep well of emotional awareness and goodness and even music. All of that and more.

Four Thought Experiments, oil on canvas, 2011

All of that and more go into each one of his paintings. That is what it takes to bring one of his paintings to life. Like beautifully crafted ships or flying machines. Ready to launch themselves out into the world. He has been making paintings like this since he was a very young man, wise and mature and prolific beyond his years.

not titled, Oil on Canvas, 47"x24.5" 2014

So that is part of the story. Part of what goes into the paintings of Rory Parks. Part of what goes into these constructions that he envisions and executes with extraordinary deliberation. The paintings, the narratives in and behind the paintings, and the experience of the paintings, come together, integrate, to give us something highly evolved, utterly unique, and wholly original.

not titled, Oil on Canvas, 48.75"x25.5" 2014

These are dystopian landscapes the likes of the cave paintings of Lascaux. They tell a Mad Max kind of tale of a civilization hung up on itself, a civilization that lost touch with itself, with the earth, with why we are here. These are beautiful portraits of hubris, of decay, of paradise lost.

Organism Tracks (After Flayed Rabbit), Oil on Canvas Assemblage 2014

We see buildings and bridges and structures like grand arks, withering in the landscape like ancient ruins, lost cities, something out of Planet of the Apes or Aliens. They are above all, however, living, alive, organic, and as such, organisms. They are at once proud and beautiful and even defiant. They stand tall, but they are falling apart.

Blue and White Projector, oil on canvas, 32”x18”, 2009

Within the larger play of his various constructs, devices, lenses, and narratives, there is something else going on. It is his language of painting. His texture. His fabric. His thin lines of pigment that build his surfaces. Where unusual color dialogue sneaks in, sets off sparks, and surprises us. A whole wonderful world unto itself. Delicious strips of paint, bumpy coalescing lengths of juicy brush strokes that Van Gogh would make a meal of, that tell a color story Albers would delight in, brush strokes that are knitted together, cemented together, thatched together. This is his signature style. Where paint acts like paint. Where our itch for the sensuality of paint gets scratched. Where we could happily set up camp. Where we can be intimate with the richly layered painting experience. Where we can be intimate with Rory Parks's paintings.

Rory Parks, 2003, oil on canvas

Parks builds and stretches slightly irregular canvasses that enhance the essential "from the ground up" aesthetic of the work and reinforce the cave painting vibe. Rory Parks as Robinson Crusoe, artist documenting the fall of Western Civilization with his bare hands.

Blue Projector(Book), oil on canvas, 32”x17”, 2009

Interestingly enough some of his inspirations spring directly from just such sources, like St Peters on  the island of Bermuda, where the artist has deep family roots. The 1612 church has been rebuilt many times but the interior provided a rich jumping off point thick with history, culture, and the human stain. The body of paintings pulled from that experience tapped into a world trapped in amber.

Rory Parks, Rose Viewfinder De Facto Organism, oil on canvas, 2007
(inspired by St Peter's interior, Bermuda)

Parks also peoples his paintings with characters. We are not alone. Strange animated forms stand in for us. Abstract inventions consistent and faithful to the abstract nature and mission of the work. These are paintings, first and foremost. They never forget that. They speak through the language of painting, through form and color, mark and composition. Beautifully. Always.

Inside the Monastic Volume of the Calendar, oil on canvas, 2012

Rory Parks, 2004, oil on canvas

There is also this pop culture question imbedded in them. Like the great wall in King Kong, are his brilliant, elaborate, and complex constructions built to keep us out, or something in. This question is unspoken, but it gnaws at us, haunts us, providing just one more motor to a body of work that would seem to generate enough chthonic energy and power, like the cave paintings at Lascaux, to reach across time, to call to us, to wake us from our slumber, to whisper in our ears as we charge, half a league, half a league, half a league onward.

Quity’s Double Blue Cross Pageantry, 18” x 36”; oil on canvas, 2011

Rory Parks, water base paints on board, 2006

Stamps and Envelopes, 2016 Installation, SAC Visual Arts,
 San Antonio, Curated by Norbert Clyde Martinez JR

Artdeal Magazine
Spring Hill, April, 2017

Hang On To Your Hot Lights (installation 2013),
 Oil on Canvas, wooden sculpture/shelving installation 2013

Rory Parks, oil on board, 2012

Four Thought Experiments, Installation detail

VAN HANOS AND RORY PARKS @ THE OPENING OF ASTRAL WEEKS, 2013

Rory Parks, 2013, water base on board

Rory Parks Installation, The Bow Street Gallery, 2016 - 2017

This essay accompanies the Rory Parks painting exhibit currently on display at the Bow Street Gallery.

Rory Parks Installation, The Bow Street Gallery, 2016 - 2017

Rory Parks at the Rema Hort Mann Foundation

roryparks.com

Notes From The Blast Site: Thomas Berding at the Painting Center

Lessons In Building, 22″x24″, oil on canvas, 2013

At some point in his career Tom Berding took a detonator to his paintings to find himself again. Must have been around 1999. Call it collage aesthetic or deconstruction, doesn't matter. It worked. He hit a dead end and hit destruct, and boom, he rediscovered the joy of painting. Color, mark, shape, space, sound, texture, music, dialogue, energy, harmony, tension, conflict, balance, etc.

Thomas Berding, Command Tree, 44 X 48″, Oil on Canvas, 2013

It is as though he followed Philip Guston in reverse. Guston complained in the early 1960s that he hungered for something more solid when he abandoned his gorgeous, Monet-like, diffused 1950s abstractions, and then shocked the art world with his comic book hallucinations.

Thomas Berding, Physical Plant, 1990, oil on canvas, 59 1/2 x 108 inches

Thomas Berding blew up his own comic book hallucinations of the late 1980s and early 1990s to unleash something that is hard to put a finger on, literally notes from the blast site, exploded comic book hallucinations in vivid animated technicolor, a delightful and refreshing world that is partying like there is no tomorrow, like 1999, a non-stop parade, a non-stop flight to Rio, a place out of control, where the viewer isn't presented with an end, but a beginning. That is what his paintings are like: come on in, the party has already started, and we're having a blast.

Remainder in the Field, 2016, oil, acrylic
 and flashe on canvas, 24” x 24” 

Glorious color goes hand in hand with his loosely defined and multi-layered shapes and structures. It is at the heart of this process of making and breaking form and space. It is as though the viewer is being given certain variables, certain options to work with. Possibilities. Ocean blues might be one, here, take these nice ocean blues I've found. Or these tangerine oranges. What do you think? This farm door green speaks to me in a way I never imagined winding through this luscious raspberry sherbet magenta colored fragment/figment sea of my imagination.

Surplus Mound, 2016, oil, acrylic 
and flashe on canvas, 76” x 70” 

Now I want you to find your way through this kaleidoscopic playground. Step into my template. My neighborhood. Mister Berding's neighborhood. Watch yourself. Endless fun. Things shift, swing around, heads up, hold onto your hats, this ride takes unexpected twists and turns, but we are going somewhere today, some place special, constructed just for your entertainment, your sense of adventure, your sense of possibilities, your sense of hurrah, of fantastic other worlds, of unseen other places.

Thomas Berding, 2008, By Land and By Sea, Oil on Canvas, 70 X 76

Or not. Some viewers can also just stand back, take in something that acts like abstract arrangements of color and form, and be perfectly happy. Collage experiences which seem to move when our backs are turned, playful interior and exterior landscapes of brilliant color and light, breezy and revitalizing like a Spring day. Ride or not, Thomas Berding's paintings gift the viewer this one thing. They are the pleasure of painting. The joy of painting. The love of painting. And we are happier and better for them.

Explosion View, 44″x48″, oil on canvas, 2013

Addison Parks
Artdeal Magazine
Spring Hill

Sunrise Sunset Die Cut, 2016, 
oil, acrylic and flashe on canvas, 70” x 62” 

Multiple Futures, 2017, oil, acrylic,
flashe on canvas, 40" x 36"

Orienting Devices, 2017, oil, acrylic,
flashe on canvas, 30" x 24"

Thomas Berding
PAINTINGS FROM THE SURPLUS MOUND

March 28, 2017 - April 22, 2017
Opening: Thursday, March 30, 6:00-8:00pm

THE PAINTING CENTER 547 West 27th Street, Suite 500 New York 10001

Into the Wild, 2017, oil, acrylic,
flashe on canvas, 30" x 46"

Thomas Berding was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and received an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Berding’s paintings have been recognized with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and NEA/Mid America Arts Alliance. His work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at the University of Maine Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, and in October 2016, Oakland University in metro Detroit mounted a survey of the last decade of his work which was accompanied by a major catalog. Over his career, Berding has exhibited at many venues including the David Klein Gallery, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Rochester Institute of Technology, Indiana University, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Savannah College of Art and Design, and Rhode Island School of Design Museum among many others. Thomas Berding currently lives and works in East Lansing where he is Professor of Studio Art at Michigan State University.

For more information on the artist see: thomasberding.com or thepaintingcenter.org/exhibitions 

Set Free by Nature and Art: The Landscapes and Abstractions of Don Alden

Don Alden, Winter 3, oil on canvas, 30" x 40"

Don Alden is looking for peace in his paintings, and he shares this. Serenity, whether in his abstractions or his landscapes. There is no conflict there. One is simply on the inside, the other on the outside.

Don Alden, The River, oil on canvas, 24" x 30"

One is a place where he looks inward, the other outward. What could make more sense than that? Why wouldn't we all be doing that? Balance. Completion. Indeed, Don Alden's paintings are about being whole. Holistic.

Don Alden, Winter Shadows, oil on canvas, 30" x 40"

Don Alden is a graphic designer by training and by trade, but in his heart he is a painter. Painting is where he goes to get away, to be himself, to be by himself, to heal, to commune, with nature, with the universe. He can look harder and deeper. He can ask questions and even get answers. He can find sanctuary, he can find light, he can find peace.

Don Alden, Silver Lake, oil on canvas, 24" x 30"

Landscape painting came naturally to him when he started painting. His home backed up onto conservation fields, as pretty an expanse of nature as you could ever dream of. It spoke to him. It called him. As an athlete he spent so much time running and cycling and training as a guest in this halcyon paradise.

Don Alden, Old Sudbury Farm , oil on canvas, 39" x 40"

As a visual person, honoring that paradise was a no brainer. It was a simple act of gratitude, adoration, homage. Humility. Humbled by the magnificence of it all. That he could be a part of it. That every day he woke up and it was just there, waiting, alive, full of energy, beauty, power, mystery and majesty. It showed him something new everyday, taught him something new. He got to feel it, love it, and know it.

Don Alden, Red Blue Red, oil on canvas, 20" x 20"

Abstraction was something else all together. Strange. He didn't know the first thing about it. About its history, its development, its pioneers, its standard bearers, its heroes. He barely knew where to start. Which foot to put forward. A landscape was right in front of you, and if you looked hard enough and long enough, it would guide you. It would show you the way. The rest was up to you. Abstraction had no such road signs. It was all up to him. He was completely in the dark.

Don Alden, Silver Linings, oil on canvas, 16" x 20"

But over the last twenty years Don Alden has kept at abstraction while painting and selling his landscapes. Those abstractions were a curiosity to his friends and clients. Don's quirky side. His personal side. A strange and curious but forgivable eccentricity. Don Alden is also a business man. His abstractions not only revealed an impractical side, they exposed it. What did they mean? What was he trying to accomplish.

Don Alden, Elevated, oil on canvas, 12" x 20"

By learning the language of abstraction he discovered its poetry, and who has time for that? In the business world this is nothing but a can of worms better left sealed tightly closed. You start contemplating abstraction, or poetry, and the next thing you know you're out of a job.

Don Alden, Fortitude, oil on canvas, 16" x 20"

Don Alden is no longer a stranger to the language of abstraction, or its poetry. It is there for him the way the landscape is. A place where he can find energy, beauty, power, mystery and majesty. A place where he can find peace.

Don Alden, Circling Swirl, oil on canvas, 40" x 30"

Addison Parks
Spring Hill

Don Alden, Blue Green Bliss, oil on canvas, 16" x 20"

http://donalden.com/

Artist Notes: Martin Mugar and That Chthonic Thing

Love this painting!

Really mesmerizing! That glow about it that Spring has. That chthonic light you love so much. A glow I am desperate to see and feel and bask in, but I got a dose of it from this painting. It also, of course, has a very powerful dynamic emerging in the diagonal patterns, patterns that shift and flip and veer slightly off course creating a kind of vertigo. Dizzying. This is new in the work, and I have to say, a revelation! Remarkable! A real master work! Beautiful painting!




Addison Parks
Spring Hill



Martin Mugar
#73
2016
Oil and wax on canvas

http://www.martinmugar.com/Martin_Mugar/Welcome.html

Artist Notes: New Paintings by Nina Nielsen

2017. Nina Nielsen continues her powerful personal search for the divine, cutting across space and time, traversing centuries and cultures and spiritual history. Her paintings go mano a mano, face to face, with our deepest selves. This is dream painting fusion. This is long, strong vision. This is the diary of a stargazer.


















Addison Parks
Artdeal Magazine
Spring Hill