ASHLEY PARKER
Artist’s Statement
Dream of Ionia: Acrylic on Cardboard. This piece came to me in a dream after watching too many episodes of The Durrells. It transformed in the painting, from a midday scene to a sunset. The image of a solitary woman with parasol, silhouetted by the sun on an ocean walkway, was the germ of the entire piece, and I like to think she is waiting for someone.
Fireflies: Watercolour-Acrylic on hot-press paper. This piece began as an attempt at a half-baked impressionism but turned into something rather more folktale-ish. It also marks an experimental approach to combining watercolour with acrylic medium in varying dilutions.
Lost Woods: Acrylic on Cardboard. I spend a fair amount of time, when I am able, in the deep Gondwana rainforests of Australia, former. There are no grand crumbling ruins in them, but the vast cathedral trees and the deep time of both the forest itself and the traces of humanity within it produce a similar atmosphere. This is a reinterpretation of a particular creek I visit, where two grand overhanging trees produce a similar visual of the long sacred dark of a temple.
Ashley Parker is a lifelong resident of the Northern Rivers of Australia. They are a legal philosopher, artist, and author. Their work is firmly embedded in the soil and forests of their home, and the region’s many contradictions. They are plagued by tree motifs and probably need to get out more.