Wood Work

Kingsley Parker: Wood Work
January 29 – July 6, 2022

Kingsley Parker studies trees and tools as individuals marked by time, weather and adversity. This exhibition includes large scale paintings of forest sentinels in all their majesty and distress, alongside intimate portraits of simple hand-tools, forged to shape and cultivate our built environment using the lumber gleaned from those very same trees. Well-worn dropcloths discarded by commercial painters serve as grounds for Parker’s depictions of trees. The curving irregularities, seams and embedded marks of these canvases echo the texture and lean of ancient trunks that the artist has observed from Mount Spokane to Millerton, Penobscot Bay to Hudson. Whether trees or tools, Parker chooses subjects that have endured much. A collection of old hand tools is represented here not merely as an index of useful items, but as hand made objects themselves – dignified and beautiful in their simplicity. Human work at its best is creative and productive, while also dependent upon a healthy, balanced ecosystem. This work celebrates the complexities and nuances of that interdependence.

Listen to Kingsley Parkers’ online artist talk discussing his simultaneous exhibitions Living in Harm’s Way with Gallery Director Laura Von Rosk from the Lake George Arts Project, and Wood Work with Gallery Director Kathy Greenwood.

YouTube Link Here


Kingsley Parker earned his BA in American Literature from Middlebury College VT, and MA in Fine Arts from Hunter College in New York City. He also studied sculpture at University of Hartford Art School, and printmaking at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA. His recent solo exhibitions include A World of Hurt (2021), and Oceans Apart (2016) at Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY; UpRiver, my journey home, Walnut Hill Fine Art, Hudson, NY; UpRiver installation, Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY; and Diminishing Expectations, Bond Street Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at Albany Center Gallery; Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany International Airport Gallery, Albany, NY; Re-Institute, Millerton, NY; Kentler International Drawing Space, Red Hook, NY; Time and Space Limited, Hudson, NY; City University, Jersey City NJ; and the Hyde Collection, Glen Falls, NY. His awards include a Visual Arts Sea Grant of Rhode Island; a scholarship from ArtWeek, Great Spruce Head Island, ME; a $10,000 grant from AE Ventures for a printmaking sabbatical in Italy; and residencies at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venezia, Italia; Tipoteca Italiana, Museo del Carattere e del la Tipografia, Cornuda, Italia; and a six month Scholarship residency at Manhattan Graphics Center.

You can learn more about his work at www.kingsleyparker.com

View the exhibition catalog here.