For Immediate Release:
New Work by Artist Leslie Parke on view at Moss Galleries
BEYOND the SENSES
Paintings by Leslie Parke
April 29th - June 4th
Moss Galleries
How we know the world is by our experience of it through our senses. If our senses get distorted by whatever means, that also becomes part of our reality. It informs our understanding of the world and our place in it.
- Leslie Parke
In Beyond the Senses, Leslie Parke presents a series of paintings based on an unexpected personal experience that changed her understanding of the world and our place in it. The exhibition is on view from April 29th to June 4th at Moss Galleries in Falmouth, Maine.
While enjoying a jazz performance in a local cabaret, Parke noticed an unexpected shift in her perception. “As the music was playing, I experienced a kind of ‘tunnel vision’ where everything went black around the edges of my line of vision and all I saw was the band,” she said. “Suddenly the whole room exploded into pixelated color - like tiny bits of colorful confetti. The band, the audience and then I, too, became pixelated. Instead of feeling alarmed I was overcome by a tremendous sense of well-being.”
“I was no longer there, but I was also everywhere,” she continued. “Worry, purpose, need, and even desire fell away. I was in the present moment as well as all of time, experiencing an existence that was also ‘no existence’ in a world of past and present, being and nothingness, love and light.”
Parke brings this experience to the canvas in this series, which is a continuation of her ongoing exploration of what is real, what is an illusion, and how her work influences perception.
Influenced by her time as an artist-in-resident at the Claude Monet Foundation in Giverny, Parke’sfinished paintings interact with light in a unique way. Rather than lighting them specifically for the best effect, Parke suggests they be allowed to interact with natural light throughout the day. According to Parke, “It’s all about the transition of light as it interacts with the painting.”
Leslie Parke began her career in the shadow of New York’s postwar art movements during the second half of the twentieth century, following the Color Field artists. Like so many American painters from that era, Parke has spent a lifetime attempting to reconcile the still-estranged parallel universes of representation and abstraction. Now in her fifth decade as a painter, all of her many languages have broken loose and Parke has fully embraced a new kind of representationally-founded abstraction that is entirely her own.
Parke is a recipient of the Esther and Adolph Gottlieb Grant for Individual Support, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest grant as artist-in-residence at the Claude Monet Foundation in Giverny, France, and the George Sugarman Foundation Grant. Museum exhibits include the Williams College Museum of Art, the Museum of the Southwest, the Fernbank Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Bennington Museum, and the Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires. Parke has a BA and MA from Bennington College in Vermont.
Moss Galleries is excited to bring Leslie Parke’s work to Maine.
About Moss Galleries:
In 2004, with the dream of being at the forefront of recognizing Maine’s role in American Art, Elizabeth Moss created Moss Galleries in Falmouth, Maine. Over the course of 17 years, Elizabeth and her team have established a gallery of national and international repute, recently being named one of the top 500 Galleries in North America by ArtInfo. The gallery represents a plethora of artists who create in a vast range of artistic styles ranging from abstract to traditional seascapes. Moss Galleries strives to highlight Maine artists and their role in the American art scene at large, as well as the importance Maine plays in each of their work. Moss Galleries will be opening a second location in Portland, Maine in December 2021.
Moss Galleries
251 US-1
Falmouth, ME 04105
www.elizabethmossgalleries.com
207-781-2620
