In 1992 Parker moved to Ottawa. The Gatineau Hills and theOttawa Valley brought him back in contact with the countryside and inspired him to take a fresh look at landscape painting.
The paintings done at this time were in oils and very different from his earlier landscapes. The earlier work had the specific details of a place and the texture of the paint was carefully controlled and limited so as not to interfere with these details. In Parker ’s latter work the surface of the painting became as important as the image itself. He experimented with texture as a means of simultaneously making the paint and the object one and the same. Monet created this effect in his Water Lily series.
An opportunity to teach water colours opened at the Ottawa School of Art. Parker had been working primarily in oils and had no water colours to show the selection committee. Instead he presented two oil paintings done with thin washes on water colour paper. It was a technique he had borrowed from Emily Carr. The head water colour instructor at the school was brought in to verify the quality of Parker ’s work and, after close examination of the paintings, said, “I don ’t know how you achieve these effects but these water coloursare terrific.” With that endorsement, Parker was hired to teach. He immediately went to the library to find out how to paint in water colour. For the next 10 years, Parker taught water colours and Canadian art history in.
Water colours began to dominate Parker ’s work, and the Ottawa Valley became his source for imagery though the paintings were not necessarily site specific. An old building might be take from one location, animals from another and a sky from a different day. These were detailed paintings of the landscape, but included old farm houses, barns and animals. The work became reminiscent of the paintings of Andrew Wyeth.
At their essence, these paintings allowed Parker to create a visual space with light, shadow, atmosphere and a sense of reality. His work started moving towards the creation of space rather than the depiction of a place, and were as much from his imagination as they were from experience. His interpretation of the land represented his consciousness as an artist as much as it represented a particular place.
In 1990 Bill Mayberry of Winnipeg ’s Mayberry Gallery became Parker ’s art dealer. Although Parker ’s water colours had been a great success, Mayberry pointed out that the strength of the work lay in the power of the landscapes, and that the animals and farm structures were merely touches of nostalgia. This observation reinforced something Parker already knew and liberated him to progress in new directions.
Soon he was painting panoramic vistas of the Canadian landscape based on his travels across the country. To facilitate the change he shifted to working in acrylics and on large scale canvasses.
In 1991 he finished his first major work. “Capital Farmlands ” (p.10), a sweeping vista of a corn field being harvested, measured four by 16 feet and sold within a week of completion to the Canderal Corporation. Spurred by this success, Parker launched into a series of large scale paintings. These paintings were pure landscapes and took the viewer on a visual journey.
In 1992 Parker and his family moved to Salt Spring Island, British Columbia where he ’d been hired to instruct at a new art school. Parker taught at the Salt Spring School of Fine Art for two years, but by 1994 the demand for his paintings had grown substantially. He decided to stop teaching and focus solely on his work. This decision was made easier because in 1992 a second gallery, the BAU-XI in Vancouver, had begun to take his work, and in 1994 Parker had his first exhibit there. Endless Visions reflected his way of seeing the Canadian landscape.
In 1995 Parker was commissioned by the Wawanesa Insurance Company to create a major painting for the company ’s 100 th anniversary. While talking with Parker, one of the directors said,
“Here on the prairies we can see until tomorrow,” which inspired the title of the painting “Seeing Until Tomorrow.”
In 1997 the Master ’s Gallery of Calgary began presenting Parker ’s work. It was the keen eye of art dealer Peter Ohler who helped Parker broaden his vision. Ohler arranged a tour for Parker that took him through the foothills and Rocky Mountains by air and land, and, by chartered helicopter, around South Western Alberta. The experience not only gave Parker new sources of material, but also fired up his appreciation for the Canadian landscape and ignited his national pride.
“Imagine yourself sitting in a chair 1,000 feet above a river that flows under you to the Rockies in the background. Then imagine that the chair can drop, pivot and rise to change your point of view.
Leonardo would have loved it.” Essence of the West ,a solo exhibition of works derived from the experience, was arranged by Ohler in 1998.Since that time, Parker has had solo exhibitions at the Master ’s, Mayberry and BAU-XI Galleries.
