Born in Auckland in 1944, Parker moved with his family to Dunedin to spend his mid-childhood years, before studying at the Canterbury University School of Fine Arts in 1963. There he was taught by Rudolf Gopas, whose passionate dedication to painting was greatly inspirational for Parker. Other influences include Woollaston and McCahon, Pollock and Rothko, Monet, Van Gogh and Mondrian.
The influence of Colin McCahon, and in particular the way McCahon was able to imbue the landscape with spirituality, is evident in Parker’s oil works of the 1970s and early 80s. The mid 1980s saw a shift in Parker’s practice with experimentation in new media. He created large works on paper in gouache and oil pastel, focussing on surface texture and depth of layering with broad sections of colour. This period of innovation was the origin of the Plain Song paintings, for which Parker has become well-known.
The title Plain Song has several meanings: it refers both to the medieval Gregorian chant (music being a constant source of inspiration for Parker), and also to the structure of the Plains of Canterbury and Marlborough. It is further an allusion to the cubist preoccupation with 2-dimensional planes and conveys the concept of simplicity, minimalism and absence of any decorative or busy elements. Parker uses the 2-dimensionality of the planes and the corresponding sense of freedom to put a sense of ‘space’ into the painting.
He considers his paintings to be equivalents of relief sculptures, literally sculpting paint onto the surface with a palette knife (or even a builder’s trowel) to manipulate and emphasise the tonal and colour values and to ‘find poetry in the surfaces’. For Parker, it is the sense of light in the artwork, like a kind of inner radiance, which allows the viewer to relate to the spirit of a painting.
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