Ed Parmiter is one of those great esthetic conundrums of our word of fine art. Behold a child’s art, as you glance past the many artworks public facing on Facebook. That’s what you may think, I did, I kept scanning for my next artist to review. I needed to find sophisticated abstractist, and thought provokers like the Barons of Revolutionary University, Emil and Nick. Abstractism hath driven us mad. On a second pass I paused!
I paused as above, for the deep deep of the sea, like blue at night or evening, the changing light and mood of these incredible series, time of day, the cold of the morning, chimneys smoking. I knew it was the North, I took a chance on the simple, I viewed 2 of them! No way, I thought! He’s likely never going to capture that candy coloréd window of ocean village primary color and intentional simplicity, AND it will disprove that those are true complexities in his color sections! How wrong can you be, upon seeing the second one, I was his servant forever. Here, we shall proceed in order of what he hath last shared to the University. Welcome to a seaside candyland of colorism, with an incredibly deceptive simplicity on first glance!
Here the sapphire sea, his neighbor’s little purple fishing craft, out before the crowd. Color knows no time of day, though it may let us smile upon these changes. At one point I told him, these shapes and colors somehow tell us a backstory about thy neighbors Lord Baron! Forget the order I promised. I’ll get to it, these first two have no chronological order here!
It takes a long time to pair a simplistic genius to the old masters. I decided on Barry Windsor Smith, because both, he is very like a complexity guy, Moebius who was well considered. So why him? Windsor walked into color quite eagerly. These also happen to be great source work for the American graphic novel phenomenon.
In the following Moebius lacks nothing for color. But as to the colorations of Smith, we shall show why.
Now this is where we live, in the utopian cool palette, warm enough to show our flesh tones. But in Windsor-Smith we see a fine representative of a school that includes Frazetta. The later seems to compete with the tendering of ‘Hyperboria’, they both did do.
Here, the chosen graphics artist, complexity lover of choice gets us to red, with even complexity of color, usually reserved for those in the classical tutelage pipeline, as we have discussed, will discuss in this column.
The Baron has been a wonder to carry as an artist in residence at the sister Facebook Group to this column. He posts continually, and we get to watch him evolve. It is a deep pool, this world of color, whereas the world of color observation draws you away from your historic style as an artist (colorist).
Each artist goes through these, and many of the events are about a changing eye towards color. Color is important in of itself. Graphic novels and manga forms, even comic books, to my mind, have long since sought after and found the balance of graphic color vs photographic realism. So to see, several decades a colorful, and lucrative competitor field, or school of thought, come out of graphic forms, is exciting!
Baron Ed reverses the royal order of fine art, bringing back the simplistic modes the greatest prodigies of Paris, perhaps would view as one of their early academic phases. So is folk art, which is rendered by a brush, made of hieroglyphic simplicity and flatness. These might be painted objects from Americana, but they evolve upon your eye as the illusion of simplicity evolves along with the time spent on your eyeball. And now that odd thing that graphic fine art, like “Prince Valiant” Sunday morning cartoon from the newspaper, would do on your eyeball, and you are standing with Valiant, or looking out, as in our case, on a fishing village, whose soul, ye art about to know! Prepare thee!
When he came to us, Le Baron brought his fishing village with. But how we have learned the soul of the color of that place, morning or eve. Night cooling, dark deep and dangerous are the waves just off dock, in any coastal town from Maine to Newfoundland. Upon this cold bath creeps a house, a family, made dark by the absence of sun. These boats are our families journeying on the daily, but only slowly, each with a prayer, each of us, to capture all we can! This “House” hath returned to coast, and wood fires burning, but in this port birth is an address, even as the street the house the fires.
All are made dark in this time of day. Upon shore, bright colored walls mute down to shadowy versions of Primaries, and the sky a mournful cold and passing cloud, or warm breeze, we know not, only it passes, it swims, in the swimming it mates to the other color, sangre et blau, le colour du Revolucion! Ed is a great person, I want to think. He responds to thoughts that we are seeing families onshore in his “feelings” on canvas. He only said, “absolutely”!
Feel the warmth, feel the mist of sky, feel the love, theese love this place! And yet still the deep and dangerous sea. The sea ist forever. Note the graphics art nature of his black outlines, but ignoring the rules followed by the school appearing after Barry Windsor did. They the complex, the Baron the simplistic.
Above, we would like you to feel the family on the tugs and fisher boats. Each bears a story, only an artist can tell ye! Perhaps only a colorist can. And this is why a colorist amongst the graphics art crowd (Moebius excluded) rises to the top, or near it. Concentration on color as the final scetch tool is what I see in Smith and at least those two I mentioned. Have a look!
Here, color adds vision of reality, but also some strange sense of culture. A strong ‘who is the person’ jumps out of the viewer. The thing historically with red and blue is making me more curious about the prophetic combination, that calls to so many. Complexity adds anchor. But it would kill us fans of Ed Parmiter. Within the simple are some of the most complex color sections, as these home walls, this is the life of the village.
Again, note his forays into sky coloration. Something in the sky draws us. Something not there, in academic art, draws the eye downward, to the earthly subject. This would be yet another opposite, his little art rebellion.
Oh dear reader, no matter how mother Earth envelopes the sea home in her harbor, just beyond the harbor crests, lies an unending, and unfriendly alien. We know the sea not. But the Nobles of Arte can shew thee.
Forget cold Davy Jones, and come with me, the sky is full of big catches, and some coop boats even. They fly colors, like knights.
This triangle of sails and color has an oriental feel. Harbors are a great common denominator of the planet. Some how the China type ship is a great opportunity to express the sea. It is also a home in the waves to a family. Ed loves the sea! Ed loves the sky! Ed loves the harbor family.
The love of the harbor family continues. The rocks of the harbor are a comfort to harbor folks! Love of sky is brewing color. Note how starkly the cerulean contrasts the fisherfolk’s houses and ochre on that tiny island. So again and again he returns to questions of color. Is it a random pastiche? What is the meaning of color? Is it the cold black depths of our oceans, does that feel blue unto us? We are going to talk about a sea home, called a lighthouse, taking sustenance and giving light. Art questions the viewer eye.
I once spoke to the Baron concerning this deep ocean, he shyly agrees with everything his favorite critic guesses about the sea color, the whimsical sky, the, the life of the fisher gifted to us. What we talked about in the University discussion space was the darkness and danger below their lowest decks, the unpredictability of the goddess we call the sea. And we said the deepest navy blue could not describe this weight of depth, this danger of drowning.
Do not then, these little houses of the sea tell you a story of a family? This is why art is here! It doesnt hurt to be in love with color, to seek after. They are like candy on canvas, each one. Perfect for a complex little fung sui display space in your home. Add some color to this tan and white coffin, would cha??
He is the lighthouse, and as I began to ask about them, he showed us the lone church and the train engine. He said when I asked for a church for the show:
“I love painting Churches and it’s our Days off…Momma Tripp and I will hit the road on one of our long drives looking for great pics to paint from ..it has been a busy week ..thank you to Tripps Gallery for the sales this week I had no time to post and for getting me a nice Comission…Gordon Ritchie was the Artist of the week at Tripps…”
Here is one in the village, but I like the second one out in the autumn woods.
And so, he is the church
And so he is the train engine. But it is the harbor and its people I think, that really moved him to see the families behind the bright, hulls and cabin walls of the fishing boats.
He is more than the sum of his motives or techniques. Bright rectangular sections for walls and puffy coloréd fireworks, that is gratis, for as who drafts color into his drab surrounding! Buy one! Contact Ed through us, he will welcome you into the little art gallery called Tripp in his beloved fishing village!
I asked Ed about the popcorn coloréd skies, he simply said it was his joy of color. Color has come to the fishing village, to replace the grey stormclouds seizing the family with fear, a sunny day at sea is a bursting joy.
He is not yet mated to any style he says: “always like learning…”, speaking of new art motifs. This next one hardly seems his.
The rough brushed sky is very much outlier in his body of work, what is adhered closely is the deepness, or real deep feel of his harbor. Atop, the coloréd houses of the sea (the family fishing boats and their crests of color), in them, the family warmth. An perhaps thought unimportant small member of his body of work speaks to me, its brushing showing unlike the very finished ones (by appearance) we have reviewed here.
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Byron E Montgomery
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