Michael Parkes: Paintings, Drawings, Stone Lithographs, 1977-1992

Leafing through this book is like listening to Italian opera, knowing no Italian. It's beatiful and filled with recurring meanings, but I'm really not sure what the words in this visual language mean. The cover gives a fair impression of what's inside: skyscapes that go on forever, themes of flight, inscrutable symbols and fantasy elements, and slender, high-breasted women elegantly dressed - or elegantly undressed, or elegantly in between. Beasts and birds abound, and fish, frogs, and peaceful, seductive lizards. A few symbols recur often enough to constitute patterns, including sphinxes, swans, and dancers on rings or lariats suspended in the air. Whatever the differences between scenes and between the women shown, Parkes's uniform skill in rendering suspends disbelief before the viewer knows what happened. The visible but unreadable inner logic of each image is wholly convincing, at least for the moment. Parkes's women project grace and command - very few of his male figures are dealt with nearly so well. A clown with rams-horn headgear recurs in many paintings, often with the eyes obscured. Servant dwarves appear in a number of scenes. They somehow remind me of "Jeremy Hillary Boob" from "The Yellow Submarine," desptie lack of obvious similarities. The dwarf also leaves me wondering if this is Parkes's own presence in his paintings, as servant to the women he so obviously adores. -- wiredweird

Any person interested on Magic Realism art must take a look at the work of this artist, which can be considered as a kind of translation of the soul. Stonelitographs, oils and bronce sculptures are part of the world created by Michael Parkes, a magic world plenty of strange creatures and beautiful women.