ANTONY PARKS
Paintings, Photographs and Graphics
from the LANGUEDOC
A 50 year career in 50 seconds of reading……
I have always drawn and painted; I was never taught. All my prep school books were full of drawings: spitfires and huricanes; stukas dive bombing battleships in the margins and later on it was greek warriors!
I started my creative career in the early seventies as a story board artist and rostrum camera man in a London AV studio. In 1980 I went to teach at the Royal College of Art as head of Audio Visual in the Photography school. Next stop was Rome for a year where I ran an AV studio and started to learn computer graphics. Returning to London I continued as a story board artist, photographer, and graphic artist. After what would now be called "burn out", I started a second career as a yacht skipper. I now live in Beziers where I have returned to painting, photography and some graphics.
Now I paint whatever attracts my attention; I see colours and shapes all around me: faces, young and glamorous, or old, weathered and beautiful, flowers in spring, trees, vineyards in the autumn and the sea…..
My paintings try and bring these shapes and colours to you, the viewer. The paintings are explanations of what makes me excited. They are nearly always closely observed details. Even the landscapes deal with only one subject at a time.
I work a lot on the negative space that exists around the primary object. With colour I try to achieve a similar simplicity by working with a palette restricted to a bare minimum. Frequently I use one colour set off against a small selection of complementary tones. My favourite watercolour box has only 8 colours in it of which only 4 or 5 are ever used in any one painting.
My paintings de-construct or re-construct what I see. Subjects that I want to tackle are filed away. I use photographs and watercolour roughs. My computer is central to the process as a modern sketch book equivalent and archive system. The paintings can appear to be abstract but they are all figurative. They are never the last word on a subject but my personal “end result” of a particular moment. I am trying to produce the sublime from the prosaic.
Some of the more important dates……
Awards
1968 Observer Young portrait Artist of the Year
Major Audio Visual Shows
1975 Arts of Islam Exhibition, Hayward Gallery, London
1978- 1980 Chronosphere,
with James Gardner Studio, Beit Hatfutsot (Diaspora) Museum Telaviv
1882 The Whale Dance, directed and
animated by Per Dahlberg
for the WWF. Won the AMI Award in Philadelphia.
1984 Today We Make Tomorrow,
with James Gardner Studio, for the Holocaust Memorial Centre Detroit
1984 Volterra Audio Visual Festival,
awards for Whale Dance and Today We Make Tomorrow
1985 SIP (Italian Telephone Company)
Corporate Identity Show for Milan Trade Fair
1985 Eduardo Paolozzi Exhibition, Royal Academy, London
Teaching Post
1980-1986 Head of Audio Visual in the
Photography School at
the Royal College of Art, London
Book Design and Writing
1981 Darkroom section in John Hedgecoe’s Advanced Photography
1983 Forox, Rostrum Camera Course Handbook
1991 Sailing: The True Techniques (Design)
1991 Riding: The True Techniques (Design and Photography)
1991- 1993 Series visualiser and computer graphics consultant for
“I Was There” children’s history books.
Titles include:
Vikings, Knights in Armour, Pyramids,
Medieval Towns, Industrial Revolution,
First World War, and Italian Renaissance.
Painting Expositions
2007 Sobradillo, in the centre of the Arribes del Duero Natural Park,
one man show of watercolours
2013 Callian, in the Var
2014 Callian, in the Var
2015 Callian, in the Var
2015 One man show, in Isle sur la Sorgue
2016 Arts3F, Lyons
Les Voiles d'Antibes
La Casa Occitane, Marseilan
Arts Mony Association, Pezanas
2017 La Casa Occitane, Marseilan
Arts Mony Association, Pezanas
2018 One man show, Villa Ingaborg, Cagnes sur Mer
“Sail Art, Art Voile” with Pierre Colas, in St Tropez
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