Neal Parks

NEAL PARKS Art+Design  
Vision & Collaboration 

Contemplative - Spatial Awareness - Spiritually Evocative:
experiential concepts that describe what Neal Parks brings forth to his viewers. Imbued with a calming, yet energizing effect, the evocatively fibrous quality of Parks's canvases are created with a signature style of mark-making, utilizing oil paint sticks on a toned substrate, usually canvas. He equates his process as the layering of abstract, calligraphic-like line work. 

Parks specializes in client collaborations with the creation of site-specific work for the aesthetic enhancement of residential and corporate environments. 

Neal showed signs early on that he was destined for creative pursuits with an affinity for drawing and an interest in things architectural. He has degrees from Pratt Institute, BFA Painting,  and Cranbrook Academy of Art, MFA Painting. As a child, growing up in rural New England, he would often draw on his own imagination for subject matter, while also developing sketched imaginative concepts for contemporary building structures. In those formative years he was also involved in theatrical pursuits, studying modern dance and ballet, and performing and teaching pantomime. Big dreaming small town high school years preceded big city art school years, where Parks spent a great deal of time looking at art in museums, where the influences of Impressionism (Claude Monet) and Abstract Expressionism (Jackson Pollock) coalesced for him in the development of colorful, active paint surfaces that became his personal style.     

Other directions: an ongoing art/dance collaboration with faculty from the Mt. Holyoke College Dance Dept started out as a playful experiment in a studio and led to the development of the 10 minute performance piece titled Written On the Body. It features a unique recorded sound-scape in concert with an interaction between the artist and a live dancer via an ingenious use of digital projection. This well received piece has been performed at numerous venues over the past decade. 

Design/build of structures: carpenter is a role that Parks is equally comfortable with, wielding power tools, swinging a hammer and haunting lumber yards. He has completed a number of solo residential renovations, additions and small, stand-alone structures.  

As an art teacher Parks enjoys sharing his passion for his craft. He works with young adults teaching courses ranging from art history, color theory and traditional 2D art making skills. During his first year out of college, in the mid 80s, he was the arts teacher at a private high school in CT. Years later he taught adjunct classes at Parsons School of Design, and Becker College. Since 2011 he has been an adjunct professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Eastern Connecticut State University. He is currently teaching 2D Design Elements and Studio Art Intro Spring semester 2021.

His work is in corporate and residential collections from the Silicon Valley to the Connecticut River Valley and parts in between.

Interested in learning more about Neal's art, collaboration,  commissioning, design consulting, exhibiting opportunities, or to simply say hello, feel free to get in touch here!