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Submerged Form

 

Ione Parkin is a painter/printmaker who has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally for 20 years. Elected a Royal West of England Academician (RWA) in 2006, she has a BA Hons in Fine Art from Winchester School of Art. She was born in Oxfordshire in 1965 and lives in Bath, UK.

She is interested in landscape in the broadest sense – in the primal dynamics of organic life and geological process. Parkin’s artistic preoccupation with the deep history of earth formation and organic evolution evokes a time before the existence of humankind.


Matter

Parkin’s work draws firstly on her own direct experience of varied environments, including volcanic terrain, glaciers, cave interiors and exposed rock surfaces. She also draws on secondary source material, ranging from microscopic images of biological growth and mineral composition through satellite macro-images of earth’s surface to radio-telescopic images of deep space. The paintings are never specifically topographical. They are a striking synthesis of external stimuli, transformed through the act of creation into textured images of visceral impact – mark-making and meaning combined. The final images appear freeze-framed in time and motion – uniquely specific but always eluding and defying absolute definition. The work celebrates the beauty of the raw elements of nature.

(Ione Parkin, show statement, “Fragments of Infinity”, New Gallery, Royal West of England Academy, 2010.)

  • “Parkin’s intention to illuminate us to the interconnectedness of the natural world in a non-representational way is sublimely achieved”

    (Ione Parkin RWA: Fragments of Infinity, Geoffrey Bertram, 2010.)

    “Fused pieces of pure invention, spirit and matter, she is happy for her paintings to exist in their own right. Hinged between worlds of reality and invention, friction and resonance, of thought and process, they stand alone. The fact that Parkin has the confidence to let her paintings speak for themselves is a testimony both to her skills and to her vision as a painter.”

    (‘Prima Materia’, Vivienne Light, 2004.)

    “...your paintings are very engaging... the surfaces of the paintings look very rich and intricate. They seem to me to suggest close up views of organic material, stone, moss, fungi, wood, skin or even distant views of the earth’s surface. I can see that they are made by someone involved and informed in the process of painting itself. They look accomplished and sensitive and there is a good sense of colour and a rich layering.”

    (Hughie O’Donoghue, 2006)

    “One of the South West’s most interesting emerging abstract painters...”

    (Adam Gallery catalogue, 2006)

    Primal Empathy