David Parrish

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This article is about the artist. For the fire official, see David Parrish (fire chief).
David Parrish in his studio in 1984

David Buchanan Parrish (born June 19, 1939 in Birmingham) is an artist known for his photographically-derived paintings, many including motorcycles, which oscillate between figurative and formalist interpretations.

Parrish is the son of Leonard and Jemima Parrish. His father toured the country by motorcycle before settling down as a banker, and his mother worked as both a writer and an artist. David's interest in art was encouraged throughout his childhood. He graduated from Phillips High School in 1957.

Parrish enrolled at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, but left and spent some time in New York City before completing his bachelor's degree in fine arts at the University of Alabama in 1961. He returned briefly to New York hoping to secure a position as a magazine illustrator. In 1962 he was hired as a concept artist for Hayes International settled in Huntsville, Madison County. He married the former Kathleen Maltby in 1963 and worked for the rest of the decade as an artist, draftsman and exhibit designer for Hayes, for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and for other aerospace firms.

Parrish began producing paintings based on photographs in 1964, initially with a scene of a country store. He soon gravitated toward images of motorcycles, as well as automobiles, aircraft, carnival rides, and the moon. His technique involved projecting color slides onto the canvas, tracing outlines lightly with a pencil, and filling in oil-based color with a fine sable brush. In the mid- and late-1970s Parrish's motorcycle pictures developed from "portrait"-style images to complex multi-layered compositions replete with complex reflections, whose intensity he exaggerates. Critics termed his later works "photographically derived" rather than "photorealist". Parrish also produced small drawings in graphite, sometimes based on earlier paintings. In the 1980s he began creating paintings of commercial porcelain images of celebrities.

In 1970 he was given his first solo exhibition at the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery in Memphis,Tennessee. He gained representation through French & Company in New York and was included in a group show at their galleries in 1971. He was included in Art in America's 1972 publication "The Photorealist: 12 Interviews". In 1973 he moved to Sidney Janis Gallery, in 1976 to Nancy Hoffman Gallery, and in 1987 to the Louis K. Meisel Gallery, all in New York. Parrish was included in the American Federation of the Arts' "The Realist Revival" traveling exhibition in 19721973, and his work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Huntsville Museum of Art in 1977. In 1979 and 1980 he taught summer school courses in painting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Parrish's 1974 painting "Honda Trail" was purchased by the Birmingham Museum of Art in 1980. An exhibition of Parrish's work was organized in 1981 by Mitchell Kahan at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts with help from the Birmingham Museum of Art and Huntsville Museum of Art. His collected papers from 1940 to 2009 are archived at the Smithsonian Institutes Archives of American Art.

References

  • Foote, Nancy (November/December 1972) "Interview with David Parrish" in "The Photorealists: 12 Interviews". Art in America Vol. 60, No. 6, pp. 83-84
  • Kahan, Mitchell Douglas (1981) David Parrish. Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts ISBN 0892800178
  • Martin, Ann Marie (May 10, 1989) "The World of David Parrish –Hunstville Artist Transforms Ordinary Items into Vibrant Images." The Huntsville Times

External links