Otago Daily Times review of Gallery 33 show

Otago Daily Times' Arts Reviewer Laura Elliot writes:

"He differentiated between colour and light; the light shines on the work, and it glows from within, giving life and movement to canvases that reveal, through every thick dollop and dash of paint, the vigorous energy of his art."

Read the full review here

Art News, Summer 2017

colour and scale, early and late - by Peter Simpson.

In the latest copy of Art News magazine, friend and former flatmate, renowned arts writer and historian Peter Simpson writes of JSP's life painting abstract landscapes with lyrically recurring sequences and rhythmic colour work.

Source: http://www.artnews.co.nz/summer-2017/

UNDREAMED OF...50 years of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship

J.S. Parker is featured in UNDREAMED OF...50 years of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship which brings together the art and the stories of half a century of Frances Hodgkins fellows. Arts commentator Priscilla Pitts writes about their work, while journalist Andrea Hotere interviews the artists about their lives and sources of inspiration.

Published by Otago University Press

The Poetry of Surfaces - Millennium Art Gallery

Until January 28, 2018 at Marlborough's Millennium Art Gallery - an exhibition of paintings and drawings from JSP themed around the poems he wrote from 1963 - 2017.

See images from the opening, here

Cnr of Seymour Street And Alfred Street, Blenheim 7201, New Zealand

Colour and Surface - The Diversion Gallery

Until 27 January 2018, an exhibition of recent paintings by Marlborough's nationally acclaimed abstract painter JS Parker.  Colour & Surface includes two of his last large canvasses never previously exhibited, and a selection of smaller studies and recent paintings.

The Diversion Gallery, Unit 5A Ground Floor, 10 London Quay, Picton Waterfront, Marlborough
 

 

JS Parker poems: 1963 - 2017

Although best known as the artist behind the abstract, modernist Plain Song paintings, JS Parker also used words and pencil drawings to document his observations of life experiences, people he loved (and some he didn’t) and his ongoing response to the landscape that inspired him. This collection of poems and drawings created over several decades offer a personal insight into what inspired his paintings. Copies of the book JS Parker poems: 1963-2017 are available through The Millennium Art Gallery for $17.50 + postage.

All poems in the book, and on this site, are covered by Copyright.

Poem: This Painter's Song

Poem: This Painter's Song, JS Parker

"I make something because I think I can hear the
song of other centuries
and I want to join in
I make something because it is
the most glorious I will ever be."

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Poem: Parking Space, Clifford Bay

Poem: Parking Space, Clifford Bay by JS Parker.

Daylight and Darkness,
and what holds inside
in those moments of insecurity,
so that nothing can ever be just one of those
ordinary moments
of ordinary lives.

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JS Parker: Plain Song - a book by Damian Skinner

J.S. Parker: Plain Song celebrates the career of one of New Zealand's leading abstract painters, John Shotton Parker. In an authoritative but easily comprehended style, art historian and curator Damian Skinner explores four decades of Parker's practice, both his commitment to abstract painting and also ‘the painterly project which has led to a profound vision of the region in which he lives'.

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Plain Song - in his own words

‘Plain Song’ refers to limiting the painting to a two-dimensional object composed of planes of paint. There exists nowadays a modernist language of two-dimensional painting, the legacy of painters such as Matisse, Mondrian, Rothko, Barnet Newman, Agnes Martin, Sean Scully and the list goes on. I see myself as being a part of that language. I have been influenced more locally by Colin McCahon and Milan Mrkusich, pioneers in NZ modernist painting. 

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