Park Art

Park Art

GINNY PARSONS

Detail from “Trees behind the baseball field”


Painter Ginny Parsons celebrates her other backyard—Lincoln Park.

Worry has given way to a “nice rooted phase” for artist Ginny Parsons. Her mixed-media paintings of oil spills and endangered birds were infused not only with beeswax, stain remover, and detergent—“the materials of motherhood” —but also “some inescapable evidence of a world bigger than the happy ending.” Rather than a warning or lamentation, her current work celebrates a local microcosm of nature: Lincoln Park, so close to her home studio that it is practically an extension of her backyard.

“I love that there’s still a few of the really big mature oaks, and the palm trees, and just the light,” she says of the park. “I’m really appreciative that there’s this little chunk of nature.” Unlike previous work, there is no attempt to save an ecosystem through her painting. “It seems so solid,” Parsons said. “I used to bring my kids to the little play structure, and now the neighbors do. It feels really grounded and safe and so Alameda. It makes me love Alameda.”

Parsons grew up in Chico, and lived in Alameda briefly in the ’80s before settling here in 1996 and starting a family. She earned a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from Chico State University and studied painting for three years at San Francisco State, but considers herself largely self-taught. In addition to creating her own work, she operates Ginny’s Art Camp after school and during the summer.

Her current series draws inspiration from the color palette of the late Berkeley–based painter Richard Diebenkorn, and is less abstract than previous work, but she continues her signature use of household products. “I do like to use what comes my way,” she says, noting that neighbors leave material they think she will find useful on her porch. “I am drawn to reuse. What’s part of life is part of art. … I had the bacon grease phase because I had teenagers that liked the bacon, and still use a little bacon grease here and there. You get a good glossy coating.”

 

Parson’s work will be on display at Gray Loft Gallery (2889 Ford St., #32, Oakland) in December in the group show Multiples of Eight, and can also be seen on her website, ginnyparsons.net. She can be reached at ginparsons@gmail.com.

This article appears in the November 2013 issue of Alameda Magazine
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