Ian Parry is an established Tasmanian artist based in Gardners Bay, southern Tasmania. With an professional career spanning over thirty-five years, Parry has built a national reputation for his original contribution and unwavering commitment to the painted landscape. With a creative practice that alternates between abstraction and formalism, Parry’s work is rooted in the traditions of aesthetics, finding pleasure in both the act of painting and the painting as object.
Underpinning this pursuit is a fascination with the hazy threshold where the sea, land and sky converge. With a deep understanding of his craft that only comes with practiced experience, including the mixing of paint and the layering of glazes and scumbles, Parry’s work resonates with a gentle glow that appears to rise and fall in intensity. Combined with softened edges and rich colour, Parry captures the strength and weight of the Tasmanian landscape, including its permanence, calming stillness and shifting light.
Parry work provides an unromanticised interpretation of the landscape, highlighting the raw aesthetic cues that accompanies the decaying light and the looming darkness that envelops Tasmania in winter.
Ian Parry has a widely acknowledged professional artistic career exhibiting regularly across Victoria and Tasmania since 1987. His work is held in numerous important private and public collections, including the Australian National Gallery, The Phillips Collection Washington, Geelong Regional Gallery, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Holmes รก Court Collection, John Elderfield Collection New York, National Gallery of Victoria and Parliament House Canberra. Parry has been a finalist in numerous prizes including the Glover Prize, Geelong Contemporary Art Prize and the Arthur Guy Memorial Prize. Parry is also a recognised educator and has been a single-handed fisherman in Bass Strait.
Exhibitions
