The Stunning Legacy of Her Extraordinary Odyssey

 

The Stunning Legacy of Her Extraordinary Odyssey 

People in My Family (1999)

The Windmills of My Mind (2024)

The School of Art (2018)

In Search of Aliens (2024)

Sailor (2012)

 

The Blue T-Square (2015)

Naughty but Nice (2022)

 

Directions to My House #2 (2022)

Do You not Know I am Woman (1999)

By Tom Wachunas

"The act of drawing is intrinsic to all visual art disciplines, and to  express oneself through the basic mediums of paper and pencil or paint and canvas is to penetrate an interior, subconscious  existence - one that is uncharted, yet rich in creative discovery."   - Patricia Zinsmeister Parker

“… Tapping into the “subconscious’’ (which using my untrained hand facilitates) allows me to make work that relies on intuition, a mixture of art-historical and non-art resources in order to create funny, sometimes irreverent yet moving imagery.” - Patricia Zinsmeister Parker

“I began to draw with my untrained left hand. What prompted this departure was a boredom with rendering objects realistically and a subconscious need to find a means of expression outside of formal artistic constraints.”  - Patricia Zinsmeister Parker

EXHIBIT: Left-Handed Compliment – Celebrating The Life and Work of Beloved Artist Patricia Zinsmeister Parker / at Strauss Studios Gallery/ 236 Walnut Avenue NE, downtown Canton, Ohio / SEPTEMBER 13- DECEMBER 20, 2025 / viewing hours Wed.-Fri. 11-6, Sat 12-5,

 CLOSING RECEPTION ON SATURDAY DECEMBER 20, 5 – 9pm.

 

https://www.pzparker.net/

From Strauss Studios: “Join us at Strauss Studios for the closing reception of Left-Handed Compliment, the first solo exhibition of Patricia Zinsmeister Parker’s work since her passing in 2024. This show features an extensive collection of her paintings, ranging from her early works of the 1970s to her final completed pieces in 2024. In addition to the artwork, guests can explore a visual timeline highlighting key milestones in her artistic journey. The exhibition’s title is inspired by the transformative period when Patricia began painting with her left, non-dominant hand—an unexpected shift that led her to the distinctive style for which she became known.”

 

   Here’s an 11^th-hour THANK YOU to John Strauss for the very important gift of his collaboration with the family of the late Patricia Zinsmeister Parker in gathering and  offering this astonishingly comprehensive exhibit of 36 works dating from the 1970s through some final pieces from 2024.

    Equal parts dream weaver and reality shaper, my friend Pat Parker was a vivacious deconstructor in articulating the familiar juxtaposed with the enigmatic. Insightful and inciteful, her uniquely refined unrefinement could unsettle your aesthetic comfort zones.  She was a thoroughly prolific and compelling artist, often investing her paintings with the unfettered energy of that proverbial kid who refuses to color inside the lines. A Parker painting was always potent evidence of her inexhaustible exuberance at uninhibited mark-making. She was seriously engaged with mindful play, making art that could wag a sassy finger in your face and rattle your sense of “finished” aesthetic decorum.   

     There be ghosts in a Parker picture. Some shout and laugh. Some whisper. Some sing and dance. Here are actions, moods, remnants, echoes. Attitudes. Essences. Riddles and rumbles, chortles and challenges, shaking shapes and loose lines lurking amidst clusters of colors both muted and wildly electric. A brush with memory. Life that’s anything but still. Unencumbered by laborious renderings of merely prosaic illusions, Parker painted a larger, deeper reality. Hers was a gripping and intrepid personal odyssey into unmitigated looking. And seeing.

  In that spirit, come to the closing reception. Look long enough at these confluences of the mundane and mysterious, these visceral joinings of memories past to moments wholly new and forever present. Look long enough. And see, please. Feel the push-pull - indeed the ineffable poetry - of purely painted possibility.