Wilma Parker
The Artist's Statement
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Wilma Parker received her BFA degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, and in 1966 a MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and has had over twenty-five solo shows. Her work is represented in twelve museums as well as numerous corporate collections.
"Everyone works from photography, and I am no exception. To get the images that appeal to me, I may combine several sources in one painting. I may use one part of a slide, repeated, enlarged or reduced across the field. Composition is the skeleton and can't be corrected later. All of these various elements have to be adjusted to produce the strongest possible composition. For me, photography is a real tool, just as predicted by Eugene Delacroix in 1860."
"The paintings are oil over acrylic, on canvas or linen, and bear the marks of my painting process. The surfaces are penciled, taped, wiped, brushed, sprayed or glazed. I spend time perfecting these surfaces because I believe that this finish reveals the concept. They are about the marks that create illusion, and the disintegration of those marks. Compositionally influenced by the camera's focal field, my themes are memories of my feelings for people, places and things that have touched me, and I have known."
What Others Say About Parker's Work
"It surprises me that there are not more artists who dare to move in as close to nature as Wilma Parker does. Perhaps they are afraid of being considered naturalist illustrators. I doubt if that reservation has entered Parker's mind. Her interests are aesthetic, not biological, yet, the physicality of the plants never escapes her. Their presence becomes wondrously and sometimes disturbingly palpable to anyone who encounters her paintings. "
Richard Mullhberger, Director
Museum of Fine Arts and George W. Smith Art Museum
Springfield, Massachusetts
"For Wilma Parker, flowers have been a medium of personal expression since she started painting them several years ago. Her art hovers between paintings as personal, poetic statements and those that are meticulous descriptions of the real. Parker's paintings depict flowers of the mind that possess a sense of the absolute and universal."
Robert A. Whyte
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco, California
"Highly influenced by the still life tradition, Parker's work demonstrates the lessons of the camera's vision of reality. Her contemporary views invite the empathy and imagination of the modern viewer, and encourage an understanding of the organic world of plants."
Janice Lyle
Palm Springs Desert Museum
Palm Springs, California
"I started with a desire to know the exotic saguaro, to meet the individual oleander in a hedge of perfect thousands. I liked the flat, shallow space, the wall becoming the actual canvas, focusing on a few simple elements in this media-blitzed, object-cluttered age."
Wilma Parker, MFA
Southwest Art Magazine