Ian Parry

Ian Parry was born into a family of seafaring descent. His extensive career as a respected practising artist and teacher, has uniquely included a fishing fleet -apprenticeship and years as a single handed fisherman in Bass Strait.

“In the early 70’s when I first showed at the renowned Powell St gallery in Melbourne, the paintings were large, abstract, with allusion to the experience of the world of water, sky and land. My visual world has always been permeated with the wet parts of thisplace and continues to be so to this day.

Maritime and geological charts and the daily necessity of plotting a course, appear in paintings where necessary, as a means of getting a schematic representation of the subject into play, trying to free the work from the tyranny of the horizon line but frequently returning.

Now-a-days I am returning to abstraction, making paintings that allow me free rein with colour and composition, aiming for a sense of permanence and independence in each work.”

Parry relocated from Melbourne, where he occupied a well-respected position in the art scene, to coastal Tasmania, furthering his lifelong commitment to capturing the boundlessness of the ocean. A commitment proclaimed by the strength of the recent paintings by this enigmatic senior artist.

“Parry’s subject remains the sea and the horizon. Often this is married with the simplified forms of natural and man-made objects, such as hulls of abandoned ships, trees and other detritus of the coast. Parry’s work hums with the vibration that colour an create when used to its best effect. Each colour harmonises to give the work a rich presence, one that is achieved slowly through many glazes and creative scumbles of paint.

Parry has exhibited widely in Tasmania, Melbourne and regional Victoria.
His works are represented in major public and private collections in Australia and overseas, including the Australian National Gallery, Canberra.”

Marguerite Brown, independent arts writer and curator