I place myself firmly in that long tradition of printmaking and sculpture which values drawing and careful craftsmanship as a means of working, and narrative and protest as a significant subject matter.
While I admire the work of many contemporary artists, my most significant mentors have been Rembrandt and Käthe Kollwitz, whose magnificent gifts of hand and eye served always to convey their passionate concern for humanity. Like them I am particularly interested in the way that the gesture of the body communicates a person’s life experience.
This does not mean that I disregard my graduate school training, which stressed — almost exclusively — formal qualities such as composition, color, and line. But in my work I hold these formal qualities in tension with the idea, striving always to use them as means of expressing content. I would agree with Ben Shahn that form and content are inseparable.
Seen above (and front-page mastheads)—Art by Margaret Adams Parker Top/Front-Page Mastheads: “Beatitude” Middle: “Käthe Kollwitz” Bottom: “Unless you see through my eyes…”
Words above by Margaret Adams Parker.