Graydon Parrish is a realist painter living in Austin, Texas. He is both trained in and an exponent of the atelier method

Atelier Method

Atelier is the French word for "workshop", and in English is used principally for the workshop of an artist in the fine or decorative arts, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students and apprentices worked together producing pieces that went out in the master's name...

 which emphasizes classical painting techniques.

Life

Graydon Parrish was born in Phoenix, Arizona, but spent the majority of his childhood in East Texas. His parents, collectors of American and European nineteenth-century art, exposed him to painting at a young age and influenced his choice to pursue an academic figurative style.

Parrish attended the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts

Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts is a public secondary school located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas . Booker T. Washington High School enrolls students in grades 9-12 and is the Dallas Independent School District's arts magnet school...

 and graduated in 1988. Unable to find further classical art training, he learned of the newly formed New York Academy of Art

New York Academy of Art

The New York Academy of Art or the Graduate School of Figurative Art is an American private, not-for-profit art university, located at 111 Franklin Street in the Manhattan borough of New York City.-Foundation:...

 in the summer of that year created by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

 and Stuart Pivar

Stuart Pivar

Stuart Pivar is a chemist, art collector and author from Brooklyn, New York.-New York art world:Pivar earned a B.Sc in chemistry at Hofstra University. An inventor, he made a large fortune in plastics, founding Chem-Tainer industries in 1959. The business specialised in bulk-storage plastic...

. There, Parrish joined other students who have become leading figures in the classical art revival, including Jacob Collins

Jacob Collins

Jacob Collins is an American realist painter working in New York, NY. He is a leading figure of the contemporary classical art revival. He founded the Water Street Atelier, The Grand Central Academy of Art and The Hudson River Fellowship.-Life:...

, founder of the Grand Central Academy of Art where Parrish is now an instructor. At the New York Academy, Parrish met his mentor Michael Aviano, a student himself of illustrator and muralist Frank J. Reilly

Frank J. Reilly

Frank J. Reilly A.N.A. was an American painter, illustrator, muralist, and teacher. He taught drawing and painting at the Grand Central School of Art, and illustration at Pratt Institute and Moore College of Art. However, he is best known for his twenty-eight years of instructing at the Art...

. Since then Parrish has remodeled color theories by Albert Munsell and Josef Albers

Josef Albers

Josef Albers was a German-born American artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century....

 to fit traditional painting methods. In some ways, he and his colleagues share the reformist attitude of the Stuckist movement

Stuckism

Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...

 in England and are likewise often at odds with mainstream critical taste.

After graduating from the New York Academy with an MFA in painting, Parrish went on to study at Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

, earning an additional B.A. and majoring in independent studies. His large thesis painting, Remorse, Despondence and the Acceptance of an Early Death, an allegory of the early AIDS epidemic, helped earn Parrish summa cum laude honors and was purchased by the trustees for the Mead Art Museum

Mead Art Museum

Mead Art Museum is an art museum associated with Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts and is a member of Museums10.The Mead Art Museum has a wide ranging collection of over 16,000 items, with a particular strength in American art, including notable works of the Hudson River School and woodcut...

. Parrish went on to show both at Hirschl and Adler Galleries in New York and Galerie Benamou in Paris, where he still exhibits. His subjects were mainly allegories and nudes. In 2001, the Tyler Museum of Art purchased "Victory", a nude inspired by the antique bronze "An Athlete Crowning Himself" in the J. Paul Getty Museum

J. Paul Getty Museum

The J. Paul Getty Museum, a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, is an art museum. It has two locations, one at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, and one at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California...

. Parrish's nudes are also informed by his research in French 19th century art. With Gerald M. Ackerman, a leading expert in the field, he has revised and annotated the Cours de Dessins by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects, bringing the Academic painting tradition to an artistic climax.-Life:Jean-Léon Gérôme was born...

 and Charles Bargue

Charles Bargue

Charles Bargue was a French artist, a lithographer as well as a painter, who devised a drawing course.-Life and career:...

.

In 2002, Douglas Hyland, the director of the New Britain Museum of Art, approached Parrish to create an allegorical tribute to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The completed painting, The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy

The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy

In 2002, Douglas Hyland, the director of the New Britain Museum of American Art, approached Graydon Parrish to create an allegorical tribute to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The completed painting, The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy, is over 18 feet long and is one of the largest...

, is over 18 feet long and is one of the largest realist paintings ever created in America. It has become somewhat controversial, both for its unabashedly academic style inspired by Jacques Louis David and William Bouguereau and for its highly symbolic content, said to express the cycle of denial and tragedy. It has been compared and contrasted with Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

's Guernica

Guernica (painting)

Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War...

and Théodore Géricault

Théodore Géricault

Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...

's The Raft of the Medusa, both also comments on catastrophes. Today it hangs in the Chase Wing of the New Britain Museum of Art next to figurative pieces by Julie Heffernan and Chuck Close

Chuck Close

Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...

. It has become a regular destination and subject of debate for New England residents.

From 1994 to 2008 Parrish maintained a studio in Amherst, Massachusetts

Amherst, Massachusetts

Amherst is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States in the Connecticut River valley. As of the 2010 census, the population was 37,819, making it the largest community in Hampshire County . The town is home to Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts...

, sharing a home with Amherst College Professor Donald S. Pitkin, anthropologist and author of The House that Giacomo Built: History of an Italian Family 1898-1978. Pitkin's ideas of community and family influenced Parrish's subsequent works, including his current Freedom Red project, a synthesis of art and activism which donates proceeds to HIV/AIDS charities. In 2008, he relocated to Austin, Texas to be near his family, teach, and contribute to the growing independent Austin art scene, including Arthouse at the Jones Center, the Blanton Museum of Art

Blanton Museum of Art

The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art is the art museum and research center of the University of Texas at Austin. Formerly under the College of Fine Arts, the museum director now reports to the University's...

 and the Austin Museum of Art

Austin Museum of Art

The Austin Museum of Art is Austin, Texas's primary community art museum, since it was established in 1961 as Laguna Gloria Art Museum. The museums roots date to 1943, when Clara Driscoll donated her 1916 lakeside estate in west Austin to be used "as a museum to bring pleasure in the appreciation...

.

Work

Graydon Parrish's style is a mix of classical realism

Classical Realism

For Classical Realism in International Relations, see Realism Classical Realism refers to an artistic movement in late 20th century painting that places a high value upon skill and beauty, combining elements of 19th century neoclassicism and realism.-Origins:The term "Classical Realism" first...

 and contemporary realism. He has shown with avant-garde favorites and reactionary classicists including Lisa Yuskavage

Lisa Yuskavage

Lisa Yuskavage is a contemporary American painter who lives and works in New York City. Her figurative oil painting is known for its engagement with the female form. Her name is pronounced yus-CAH-vitch....

 and Walton Ford. His style might also be characterized by the moniker New Old Master (coined by Donald Kuspit

Donald Kuspit

Donald Kuspit is an American art critic, poet, and Distinguished Professor of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and professor of art history at the School of Visual Arts. Kuspit is one of America's most distinguished art critics. He was formerly the A....

). Parrish counts among his contemporary influences realist painters Odd Nerdrum

Odd Nerdrum

Odd Nerdrum , is a Norwegian figurative painter. Themes and style in Nerdrum's work reference anecdote and narrative, while primary influences by the painters Rembrandt and Caravaggio place his work in direct conflict with the abstraction and conceptual art considered acceptable in much of his...

, Jacob Collins

Jacob Collins

Jacob Collins is an American realist painter working in New York, NY. He is a leading figure of the contemporary classical art revival. He founded the Water Street Atelier, The Grand Central Academy of Art and The Hudson River Fellowship.-Life:...

, Steven Assael

Steven Assael

Steven Assael is an American painter recognized nationally as one of the leading representational figurative artists of his generation. His portrayal of the human image is empathetic, ennobling, and psychologically penetrating...

, Christopher Pugliese and Daniel Sprick, as well as Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley

Bridget Louise Riley CH CBE is an English painter who is one of the foremost proponents of Op art.-Early life:...

.

Parrish's collectors include Christopher Forbes

Christopher Forbes

Christopher "Kip" Forbes is Vice Chairman of the Forbes Publishing company. He attended St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts, and Princeton University....

, Michael Huffington

Michael Huffington

Michael Huffington is an American politician, bisexual activist, and film producer. He was a member of the Republican Party, and a member of the United States House of Representatives for one term, 1993–1995, from California...

, Diane Sawyer

Diane Sawyer

Lila Diane Sawyer is the current anchor of ABC News' flagship program, ABC World News. Previously, Sawyer had been co-anchor of ABC Newss morning news program, Good Morning America ....

, Robert and Chris Emmons, Rita and David Traff, Vernon and Amy Faulconer, Therèse Garner, Lloyd and Renée Greif, and Paul and Melinda Sullivan. His public collections include the Mead Art Museum

Mead Art Museum

Mead Art Museum is an art museum associated with Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts and is a member of Museums10.The Mead Art Museum has a wide ranging collection of over 16,000 items, with a particular strength in American art, including notable works of the Hudson River School and woodcut...

 in Amherst, Massachusetts, the Austin Museum of Art

Austin Museum of Art

The Austin Museum of Art is Austin, Texas's primary community art museum, since it was established in 1961 as Laguna Gloria Art Museum. The museums roots date to 1943, when Clara Driscoll donated her 1916 lakeside estate in west Austin to be used "as a museum to bring pleasure in the appreciation...

 in Austin, Texas, the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin Texas, the Tyler Museum of Art in Tyler, Texas, and the New Britain Museum of American Art

New Britain Museum of American Art

The New Britain Museum of American Art is an art museum in New Britain, Connecticut. Founded in 1903, it is the first museum in the country dedicated to American art....

in New Britain, Connecticut.

External links

• Graydonparrish.com, the artist's official website
• Short Chagall, Long Parrish, 2000
• The Great American Nude
• Grand Central Academy of Art