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ABOUT MY WORK, ALL Leslie Parke ABOUT MY WORK, ALL Leslie Parke

THE GRID PROJECT - PART THREE : Translating into Paint

From the start, I knew that I wanted to make paintings from the broken television "grid" photographs, but they posed a lot of technical difficulties. To begin with,  I paint in oils. Making a clean stripe in oil is more difficult than with acrylic paint. With acrylics you can mask out your stripes with tape and then seal it with a clear acrylic layer, then add your color and it won't bleed. That pretty much insures that you will have a sharp edge.

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ABOUT MY WORK, ALL ABOUT MY WORK, ALL

18TH CENTURY JAPANESE SCREEN

Several years ago as I crossed the Mall in Washington on my way back to my hotel, I decided I had to duck into the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, part of the Smithsonian, and see the Asian work there. On display was the Price Collection, on loan from Los Angeles. The first piece I saw as I entered the exhibition was "Pine and Plum Trees in Snowstorm" by Katsu Jagyoku, the 18th Century Japanese artist.

The room was dimmed and soft light fell on an enormous screen with branches and falling snow. I felt completely enveloped by the piece. I had both a calm and emotional response to it, a feeling that has stayed with me to this day.

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