It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Painting

Gina Parr b: 1957 is a Painter and Photographer who “Paints” with her camera whilst traveling and away from her studio. The Artist says of her Painting practice, "Scape, memory and identity are ever present in my work. My childhood, spent diversely in wide-open spaces with my father fishing for mackerel and at home with my mother's hoarding and mental health issues, defined my relationship to the sea and land: both the spirit and memory of the open space, evoking freedom and connectedness and the dark uncertainty of the deep. My work is an expression of the intermingling of joy and pain, love and loss: the human condition and tracks the line between abstraction and figuration. When painting, I am completely immersed in the process, building a reverberating relationship with the canvas, a push and pull of spontaneity and controlled intention. I employ palette knife, cloth, brush, sponge and fingers, to add, remove, scratch, blur and work the oil paint, often drawing into the paint with charcoal, whilst aiming to evoke an atmosphere drawn from the process, the emotional trigger and the colour palette employed. Focusing on the relationship with the developing painting and the paint itself, I ultimately seek to find an emotional balance within the creation of the work, which I hope will in turn speak to the viewer’s inner self.” When not in her painting studio and whilst traveling, the Artist photographs series of transient forms and marks on walls and surfaces, which form unique atmospheric worlds, each with their own pictorial resonance or echo. Many are redolent of things half remembered, some resemble fragments of old charts and maps, others feature overt elements of graphic representation. Her intent is to frame these forms and subsequently print them exactly as found: the shapes, colour, and textures, all discovered in the weathering, decay, water damage and patination of her chosen destination. Her photographs are often mistaken for paintings. Both her painting and photography uncover our complex potential connections and disconnections with form and landscape resulting in work that she hopes will provoke our capacity to imagine a space beyond our known territories.