Reviews
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http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2005/06/currently_at_if.html
Through June 23, Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center is presenting the paintings of Katherine Pappas-Parks, and the sculptures and drawings of Junko Iijima.
Enchantment with the Observable World,
Meteora III, 2005
Pappas-Parks is an accomplished artist who is shown and collected nationally and internationally. Her Greek heritage informs this series of six paintings called At the Edge of the Sky. These are landscapes with various organic elements, ephemera and cultural icons in the foreground. One includes the waist-up nude figure of a lovely young woman.
Enchantment with the Observable World, Meteora I-IV is a series of four paintings of variations of the same landscape: otherworldly Devil's Tower-like mounds in a flat vista. In the foreground of each is a red shelf or ledge containing a glass or vase, plants such as lilies, and a book or other culturally significant objects. Aphrodite's Gift From Paris, which has the nude figure, gives us two green pears rather than one golden apple. All of the paintings have edges of gold leaf which reference Greek Orthodox or Byzantine religious artifacts.
Pappas-Parks calls her work "Painterly Realistic" and lists as influences Surrealism and Magic Realism. She was also influenced by the 20th Century writer Nikos Kazantzakis, who wrote of "beauty in an object as simple as a rock." Though indeed painterly, her technique results in a softness that, were it not for its intensity, might remind one of watercolor or airbrush. Her colors emphasize the painterly effect.
Posted by Andie DeLuca on June 15, 2005 at 15:21 |
The Oregonian, Arts & Entertainment, Friday, August 27, 2004.
