An exhibition at the Ober Gallery in Kent features the work of a father and son—Robert Andrew Parker and Geoffrey Parker.
It’s always interesting to meet a member of a close friend’s immediate family. The sources of personality traits, familiar gestures, or what one thought was a unique laugh are immediately revealed. The friend suddenly assumes a more expansive presence, as though the person you knew now somehow exists in both the present and the past. This is the experience the viewer has at the Ober Gallery’s current exhibition of art by Robert Andrew Parker and his son, Geoffrey Parker. Though the artists have distinctly individual styles, there are ties that bind their work and bridge the generational divide.
Robert Andrew Parker is one the patriarchs of the Litchfield County art world. Now a very youthful 88 years old, his long career is a masterful merging of illustration and expressionism. Parker, like many American artists before him, such as Bellows, Sloan, and Henri, began as an illustrator, and he remains a story teller. His energetic hand endows his subjects with an immediacy derived from modernism, but he always stays just inside the boundaries of narrative. This space between representation and abstraction is a vast, compelling arena that still holds Parker’s attention. In the current exhibition, many of the oil paintings and watercolors refer to his travels, which were extensive and often exotic. There are references to Spain, Nova Scotia, Ireland, London, as well as a local farm.
Light emanates from Robert Parker’s work. It falls upon his animals, shines from his horizons, and flickers between his brush strokes. There is a sense of optimism and a joy of life throughout his career, from the forty children’s books he has illustrated, to the vivid, lively paintings on view at Ober Gallery.
Robert Parker’s humor is sometimes overt but often a subtle undercurrent in his work. It is clear that he is well acquainted with the absurdity of life. At the Ober show, a large, bright watercolor on paper titled Nova Scotia is a lovely, rather traditional seascape rendered quirky by the head of a goat peering at the scene from the left. Is this a goat’s-eye-view, or is the animal joining the viewer in appreciating nature? In either case, here Parker is quite willing to show his silly side. One of his well-known monkey drawings here is both a serious animal study and a stand-in for a human portrait.
As many in Northwest Connecticut know, Robert Parker is also an accomplished jazz drummer. He still plays each week at a local club. Jazz and modern art have long been cross -influences. As soon as Robert graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1952, he moved to New York where he frequented the historic jazz clubs on 52nd Street. Jazz rhythms punctuate his confident, fast-paced oeuvre. In 1948, Robert and first wife, Dorothy married. They had five sons, four of whom are professional drummers. Only Geoffrey, born in 1956, has eschewed the family music tradition.
Geoffrey has been an artist since he was a child. Even during the ten years after high school when he was a merchant marine, he found time to draw and paint. From 1992 to 2000, he was an illustrator for the New Yorker magazine. His illustrations have appeared in over one hundred other magazines. Like his father, illustration is the foundation of his work.
While Robert is observational, Geoffrey’s paintings have a visionary quality. In all Geoffrey’s work, there is a restraint that suggests there is more to the pictures than we are allowed to see. Many of the current offerings refer to his experiences at sea. Lighthouse Buoy Ship is painted on an irregularly shaped, found piece of board. A long barge is shown virtually submerged by a rather calm ocean. Three ominous yellow lights shine, two from poles that extend high about the barge, one alights the smokestack. The dark sky, the vessel’s precarious position, and the luminous orbs are unsettling. Land looms in the near background, but help does not seem likely.
Night features in much of Geoffrey’s work. Salvage Buoy may document a mundane nautical procedure, but the large buoy in the foreground seems almost menacing, as though it might be full of aliens ready to board the boat that recedes in the distance. Hudson Radio Station shares a reserve that is absent from Robert Parker’s more active surface. Geoffrey’s composition relies on blocks of flat color and a reductive palette. The lights that shine out of these scenes act as harbingers of dread in a strange, forbidding world. We wonder: what exactly is happening inside the Hudson Radio Station?
The Ober exhibition includes a group of aquatints that are Geoffrey’s most expert offerings. The rich blacks and soft surfaces are luxurious celebrations of the medium. The structure of Buried Skier is particularly strong. The three slightly bowed, standing figures and the reinforcing diagonals of their ski poles command the small but powerful composition. With the reclining form in the foreground, the print is reminiscent of a deposition from the cross. Again, darkness prevails, and Geoffrey’s clean lines and his command of an array of dark tones align him with the best of the early modern printmakers like Abraham Walkowitz or Rockwell Kent, one of his favorite artists.
Father and son are mutually supportive, each proud of the other’s achievements. Humor punctuates their conversation. They both seem primed for laughter. Their warm, easy relationship is a pleasure to behold, in person and on the walls.
The Father and Son exhibition will remain on view until May 1, 2016 at the Ober Gallery in Kent.
Ober Gallery – New Digs Space
10 North Main Street
Kent
860. 927.5030
[email protected]
http://obergallery.com
Guest art critic Daphne Anderson Deeds is a fine art and museum consultant in Litchfield County. A seasoned art museum curator and administrator who has held senior positions at university and civic museums throughout the U.S., including the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, her eponymous consultancy serves private collectors, artist estates, museums and contemporary artists. Detailed information including testimonials, exhibitions curated, and publications is available at: http://daphneandersondeeds.com/
