About
Greg Parker is a Maine artist who has lived and worked in the Greater Portland area for more
than 50 years. He has been an arts educator who taught and guest lectured at the University of
Southern Maine, Maine College of Art, Bates College, Bowdoin College and many others. As
administrator for the Maine Arts Commission he oversaw the Percent for Public Art program. He
also was as a recipient of a public art commission and an artist fellowship from that same
agency. His exhibition history is extensive and his work appears in collections that spans
regional, national and international venues. His work is included in the collections of the
Portland Museum of Art, The Farnsworth Art Museum, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum,
the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the British Museum and others. He is represented
in more than 500 corporate and private collections worldwide.
Artist Statement
The material process of my work begins with wood panels. The paintings have a structural
presence that is almost architectural: they are built as much as they are painted. The rigid form
allows me to cover the panel with up to 20 layers of gesso, sand and then compress the paint
materials. I don’t use brushes or commercial products. The paint is constructed in layers with
various mediums, pigments and metal powders.
The paint is applied in strategies- design systems that are applied in progressive steps. Each of
these strategies adds, obscures or alters the previous layers but they all affect the final surface.
Even though there are many layers, the physical depth of the paint would require measuring in
microns.
I use mathematical systems to build the structure of my paintings. They have rational properties
that define dimensionality with measurable boundaries, predictable conclusions and familiar
utility. The structure’s simplicity is refined and elegant and their purpose appears to have an
indisputable certainty. The completeness and lack of ambiguity has a calm presence. It provides
an approachable even seductive opportunity to engage further.
As we look past that initial reading we begin to notice contradictions: movement, vibration,
shapes that shift, color that disappears, solids that become vapor. We begin to sense that
simultaneous conditions exist that question the certainty of the order.
It is not so much a duality of conditions or an undermining of confidence in what we know but a
simultaneity of multiple qualities and conditions that occupy the same space. My work is a
compression of physical materials but also an expansion of thought and sensation.
I use a range of associative elements that trigger recognition, contradiction and evolution: a
physical object that refuses to stabilize its identity.