Painting an abstract painting is so much harder than it looks. I put paint on the canvas and push and pull with the paint: addressing color and value, shapes and mark making until I achieve a balance and sense of space that feels complete. Unlike making a representational painting, abstract work takes its cues not from outside—from a landscape or bowl of fruit or face—but from within. Underneath the finished painting, there are a myriad of paintings the viewer doesn’t see. All of those buried layers represent equations that were wrestled with before I moved on. For years, I had a gnawing desire to understand abstract work. I would look at a deKooning, for instance, and think, “I don’t get it.” Then, I started to focus on the paint—at what you can achieve just with the paint—and everything changed. Having the guts to try that myself is where I was hesitant. Once I did try, I found I was still afraid but simultaneously obsessed. When I am away from the studio, going through my day, I am always thinking about the painting I am working on, which waits for me back in my studio. I can’t let go of the struggle to solve the problems being posed on the canvas; I can’t let go of thinking about how I will move it forward. I find it fascinating that struggling with an abstract work can parallel struggles I have in my life, both past and present. I have learned in my life if I let go a little and let nature take its course, things have a way of working out, often in a way that was better than I could have ever planned. So too with my art, allowing beautiful things to happen with the paint can turn the artwork into something far more interesting and with unexpected surprises. “How do I know when a painting is done? I don’t. I just have to stop.” Parkman also does portraits by commission. She can easily work from high quality photographs supplied by the client. Sketches are approved before advancing to the final painting. Capturing the likeness and freshness of a person is a gift she has. Mary is originally from Cleveland Ohio. Later she lived in New York City where she showed extensively. Her travels to Italy, Maine and Naples serve as the subject of many of her landscape paintings. Often painting her landscapes 'en plein air' she finds she is able to capture real light and space by being physically in the landscape. Having received her BFA from Cornell University, she continued her studies at The New York Studio School, the Art Students League and the International School of Art in Umbria, Italy. She teaches here in Naples and continues to show in Italy, New York, Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland and Naples.