Lucinda Parker is a Northwest painter whose abstract works are characterized by fluid motion and an expressive handling of paint. Taught in the 1960s by some of Portland’s most noteworthy artists, including Mel Katz, Harry Widman, Louis Bunce and Michele Russo, Parker is an accomplished regional artist with a career spanning three decades.
Parker’s large and energetic canvases are tamed by forms organized into organic volumes. Her newest pieces have shifted from lucid compositions to strongly defined geometric configurations and converging planes of colour that appear to be “moving” across the picture plane. The spatial push-and-pull in her vigorous arrangements creates poignant visual activity.
Inspired by elements found in nature, some of Parker’s forms extend the conical framework of a rose. For example, in Storm Rose individual petals are magnified into a vortex of sumptuous contours and seemingly pulled through space by the gravity of the flower’s multilayered infrastructure. These enigmatic shapes are dressed in local colour while primary concerns of surface texture and value take precedence.
At their root, Parker’s works lend themselves to pure elements of painting: the visceral status of wet on wet paint; the mood achieved by her northwest palette of greens, greys, yellows and blacks; and the evanescent mental and emotional state of solving the boundless challenges of abstract or improvisational painting.
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