Nicole Parker
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to present How Sad, How Lovely, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Nicole Parker. An accomplished intaglio printmaker and intuitive colorist, Parker brings a quiet intensity to her paintings, where perception, memory, and emotion are distilled into delicate calibrations of light, air, and atmosphere. Her layered and step-wise approach lends itself to subtle transformation: “I like the resulting sense of boundlessness,” she reflects, “But I also want to highlight the physicality of things that we usually perceive as an absence of anything…‘Dark’ and ‘air’ and ‘space’ don’t mean nothingness.”
With tenderness and precision, Parker invites viewers into intangible moments—of dusk, a distant glow, or the faint glint of fur in shadow. Her subjects are often overlooked or unseeable: sky, darkness, quiet. “Light is the leading character in everything hung in this show,” she notes, “but the source of it is never necessary.”
Image Right: Jojo Come Home, 10" x 22", Aquatint
Once Again, 20" x 16", Oil On Mounted Linen
The exhibition unfolds in two parallel threads. The first is observational: Parker’s Clock paintings, which appear abstract at first glance, are subtle color fields based on direct views of the sky at different times. “There’s a lot at stake,” she says, “because if the color relationships are off, it breaks the illusion.” Based on fleeting light seen through her studio window or from a parked car, these skies are stripped of objects but full of presence. “When the subject is something as elemental as light/air/atmosphere,” Parker says, “color isn’t just the most important thing—it’s the only thing left.”
The second thread returns to Parker’s narrative inclinations: works such as Tiger, Lost Fur, and Don’t Worry Kid, It’s Not Real offer glimpses into the artist’s personal memory and invented allegory. Images such as a suburban desk bathed in morning light, a poster glimpsed across the street, a grassland familiar and strange, drawn from Parker’s personal memories of growing up in the suburbs, are filtered through a lens of nostalgia, longing, and subtle humor. “I’m always ribbing [the suburbs] a little,” she says, “but in an affectionate way.” Works like Walk On the Wild Side, and Found You form a vague visual story—part memory, part invention—mirroring scenes of the familiar tinged with unease.
“How Sad, How Lovely,” a phrase borrowed from a Connie Converse song, perfectly captures the mood of the exhibition. These paintings are at once tender and distant, melancholic and affectionate—always alert to the fleeting beauty of the intangible. “Everything is temporary, everything will pass,” Parker says. “To me, that’s both amazing and tragic…but I also realize that the knowledge of temporariness is part of what lets me love those things so fully.” The result is a body of work that feels rich, specific, and personal—even as it gestures toward the universal.
Nicole Parker is an oil painter and intaglio printmaker based in Mount Airy, Maryland. She received her BFA and Certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in 2018, and has held a steady studio practice since graduating. She was a recipient of the Richard Von Hess Travel Scholarship in 2017, and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in 2022. Nicole looks forward to her fifth solo exhibition, How Sad, How Lovely, displayed at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, where she is currently represented. Her work is held in collections throughout the U.S., including at PAFA, the Woodmere Art Museum, and the private collection of Linda Lee Alter. Nicole can usually be found working in her home studio (a converted attic), or etching and printing plates at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, MD, where she greatly enjoys both teaching and learning from other artists.
Image Right: Tiger, 16" x 16", Oil On Mounted Linen
Don't Worry Kid, It's Not Real, 30" Diameter, Oil On Panel
