Parker, Wilma

"Amaryllis" Oil on canvas, 44 x 48 inches, Signed
"Hydrangea with Wasp's Nest" Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches, Signed
"Sixties Sunshine" Oil on canvas, 60 x 36 inches, Signed
"Nasturtiums" Oil on canvas, 60 x 36 inches, Signed
"Forest Park I" Oil on canvas, 60 x 36 inches, Signed
Wilma-parkerBlue-Azaleas

American Contemporary

“Highly influenced by the still life tradition, Parker’s work demonstrates the lessons of the camera’s vision of reality. Her contemporary views invite the empathy and imagination of the modern viewer, and encourage an understanding of the organic world of plants.”

Janice Lyle
Assistant Curator of Art
Palm Springs Desert Museum
Palm Springs, California

To view Wilma Parker’s Complete Gallery of artwork, please click here.

“It surprises me that there are not more artists who dare to move in as close to nature as Wilma Parker does. Perhaps they are afraid of being considered naturalist illustrators. I doubt if that reservation has entered Parker’s mind. Her interests are aesthetic, not biological. Yet the physicality of the plants never escapes her. Their presence becomes wondrously and sometimes disturbingly palpable to anyone who encounters her paintings. When I stop looking, I realize I’ve been with an art that is seductive, provocative, personal, that brings me closer to wanting to know more about the flowers. But maybe Wilma Parker has already told me the most interesting things about them, and I will settle for that.”

Richard Mulhberger, Director
Museum of Fine Arts and
George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum
Springfield, Massachusetts

“For Wilma Parker, flowers have been a medium of person expression since she started painting them several years ago.  Her art hovers between paintings as personal, poetic statements and those that are meticulous descriptions of the real. Though the inflorescences of her recent flower paintings are scientifically identifiable, their sublimation of detail and the patterning of the leaves and petals transport them into the realm of the abstract. These paintings depict Parker’s flowers of the mind that possess a sense of the absolute and universal.”

Robert A. Whyte
SF MOMA

“The cactus series plays cropped, dramatic composition against  monochromatic tone. The assured brushwork creates as mood of focused examination.  Reminiscent of Georgia O’Keefe, Wilma Parker brings her eastern sensibilities into strong focus under a western sun. In Parker’s work a flower closely viewed suggests the larger setting from which it has been plucked.”

Sally Yard
Landscapes in Recent Paintings
Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA