Erik Parker

Erik Parker was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1968. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996 and a Master of Fine Arts from SUNY Purchase in 1998. Parker has been awarded several honors throughout his career, including the Durhurst Family Scholarship (1997), Rose Scholarship (1997), and the Rema Hort-Mann Foundation Grant (1999).

Parker’s vividly colored paintings are filled with distorted shapes and otherworldly forms. Parker borrows liberally from the pop culture realms of comic books, hip hop, street graffiti, and cartoons to create imagery that is simultaneously familiar yet alien. Saturated landscapes with fauna of every color resemble the fantastical worlds of Dr. Seuss, while his hyperbolic portraits and use of graffiti-like text recall psychedelic album covers.

Parker has had solo exhibitions at galleries and museums around the world, including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield; De Appel, Amsterdam; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth; and Nanzuka, Tokyo.