Showing posts with label Michael Parkes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Parkes. Show all posts

Thursday, December 06, 2012

ART-FOOL

Staying with Fools again today - this time in art.

Quentin Massys 1465 - 1530
Belgian Painter, many religious subjects and portraits. See some examples via thumbnails HERE

His painting An Allegory of Folly


Hans Sebald Beham (1500–1550) was a German printmaker who did his best work as an engraver, and was also a designer of woodcuts and a painter and miniaturist. He is one of the most important of the "Little Masters", the group of German artists making printss in the generation after Dürer. See Wikipedia.

Two Fools, circa 1532-1550.



'Stanczyk', by Polish artist Jan Matejko (1837-1893).
The jester is depicted as the only person at a royal ball who is troubled by the news that the Russians have captured Smolensk. This event happened in 1514.
Stańczyk (c. 1480–1560) was the most famous court jester in Polish history. He was employed by three Polish kings: Alexander, Sigismund the Old and Sigismund Augustus.


Cecil C. Collins (See more here)

Cecil Collins was born in Plymouth, Devon, England. He studied at Plymouth School of Art and at the Royal College of Art, London. For a while he was interested in Surrealism but in the later 1930s, after meeting the American painter Mark Robey, he became interested in the art and philosophy of the Far East. He taught for a time at Dartington Hall, a progressive boarding school in Devon, and published The Vision of the Fool in 1947. He frequently drew on symbolism in his work and had a special interest in the figure of the fool. This creature came to signify for him such qualities as spontaneity, purity and light, unappreciated but for the artist, in modern capitalist life. He painted some powerful faces staring out at the viewer with large sad eyes. These expressive surveys recur throughout his work and the brush strokes echo these rhythms, while pattern and detail are applied in brief dark outline. .......The fool does not see the world with the disillusioned knowingness of the scientist; rather he marvels; he looks with the eyes of a child. Collins is not a conventionally religious man: indeed he is deeply critical of the world’s established faiths. He believes that they have lost sight of this ‘vision of the fool’.............
See also HERE.

The Sleeping Fool, 1943.


The Joy of a Fool, 1944.



Michael Cheval (born Mikhail Khokhlachev, Russian: Михаил Хохлачев; 1966, in Kotelnikovo, Russia is a contemporary artist specializing in Absurdist paintings, drawings and portraits (inverted side of reality, a reverse side of logic). Amazing artist! More on him and his work tomorrow.

His painting Ship of Fool


And: Art of Diplomacy




Michael Parkes His lovely paintings often include references to a Fool motif (see my post about him and his natal chart HERE)




Finally, back to tarot representations of The Fool - variations on a theme ~~~


From the Thoth Tarot deck, painted by Lady Frieda Harris according to instructions from Aleister Crowley:


From the Quantum Tarot - The Fool, the archetypal beginning is represented by Event One - The Big Bang


The card below - of course - is from The Peanuts Tarot:

Note: Copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

Friday, April 02, 2010

Arty Farty Friday ~ More on Michael Parkes

He's an interesting artist whose birth date had, at the time of my first post about him 2 years ago, escaped my beady eye: Michael Parkes. A commenter, a few days ago, kindly left me information that Michael Parke's birth data is as follows: 12 October 1944 in southern Missouri.

I'd never heard of this fine artist until we visited the home of my husband's younger daughter in Austin. She had a number of large Parkes prints in her apartment. Coincidentally, her birthday is the day before my own in late January, different year of course. I discovered that she has a liking for the magical, surreal yet realistic/representative style, which I share. I think Michael Parke's genre is known formally as Magic Realism.

In his style I see echoes of Magritte, Dali, Maxfield Parrish, oddly Alberto Vargas and the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood - strange bedfellows! All are great favourites of mine - yet Michael Parkes brings something else, something quite unique into the mix.


I had previously suspected that Mr. Parkes had deliberately kept his birth data secret. He is of the hippie generation, no doubt aware of astrology and maybe unwilling to share his details. However, since someone has information, perhaps from a biography, I guess it would not be too intrusive to take a brief look at his chart. He and his wife have travelled widely in the East, and Europe. They lived in India for a time, and now in Spain.

From Wikipedia:
"He studied the esoteric doctrines of the East and the West, and his imagery is drawn from a range of traditions including the cabalistic and the tantric, but embodied in forms from his own imagination which are immediately accessible. Here strange beasts encounter mysterious winged women, good and evil fight out their immemorial conflict, and in this weightless environment worlds are unmade and remade nearer to the heart's desire."

His chart is shown below, using the information provided, set for 12 noon and for Springfield, which is in southern Missouri but perhaps isn't his exact birthplace. Rising sign and Moon degree will not be accurate - unless, by rare coincidence, Mr Parkes was born at 12 noon in Springfield!



Sun, Mercury, Neptune and Mars all in Libra, a sign ruled by Venus, planet of the arts - a good foundation for a painter, especially with imaginative Neptune included. Uranus at 12 Gemini is in harmonious trine to the Sun/Mercury/Neptune trio, adding the dash of quirk, often leaning towards eccentricity, an element quite obvious in many of Mr. Parkes' paintings. There is esoteric symbolism there though, so what is superficially eccentric could turn out to be deeply meaningful.

What I noticed almost at once is a chain of semi-sextiles:
start at Uranus 12 Gemini > Saturn 10 Cancer > Pluto 10 Leo > Jupiter 16 Virgo > Mercury 13/Sun 19 Libra > Venus 17 Scorpio. Semi-sextile is a link of around 30 degrees between planets in adjacent signs. Adjacent signs almost always represent conflicting traits (think of shy sensitive Cancer versus outgoing show-bizzy Leo). When I see a chain like this one, which also holds within it helpful sextiles and trines (60* and 120*) I see it as a kind of soothing and bonding of conflict to form a comfortable whole. In other words an indication of an exceptionally well-integrated personality.

Without knowing his time of birth it's not possible to calculate rising sign or exact Moon degree. Moon could be in either Leo (if born before 2pm) or Virgo (if born 2pm or later). Mr. Parkes' style has more than a hint of theatrics, circus and fun about it, so Leo would be a good fit. Virgo Moon - hmm not so much - yet could easily relate to the discerning elegance and beutiful detail evident in his work.

This YouTube presentation features an interview with Michael Parkes who discusses a new painting of Venus, and talks about cosmic symbolism - I found this fascinating.
Don't forget that planet Venus rules his Sun and Libra cluster!



There's another video, "Homage to Michael Parkes" at YouTube, featuring many more of his paintings.

Elsewhere there's information at Mr Parkes' own website, and further illustration of his work HERE and HERE , or via Google Image.

VENUS




THE SUMMIT


TUESDAY'S CHILD


THE JUGGLER



THE CENTAUR



ROCK DOVE



ETERNITY


Friday, July 18, 2008

Arty-Farty Friday: Michael Parkes & Venus

Here's an interesting artist who has, so far, escaped my blog: Michael Parkes.

I'd never heard of this fine artist until we visited the home of my husband's younger daughter in Austin, Texas last year. She has a number of large Parkes prints in her apartment. Coincidentally, her birthday is the day before my own in late January, different year of course. I discovered that she has a liking for the magical, surreal yet realistic/representative style, which I share. Early Aquarians of similar taste!

In Michael Parkes' style I see echoes of Magritte, Dali, Maxfield Parrish and the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood - all great favourites of mine - yet he brings something else, something quite unique into the mix.

It's not possible to look into Michael Parkes' astrology. His birth date, other than "1944", doesn't appear anywhere on-line. I suspect that he has deliberately kept his birthday secret. He is of the hippie generation, no doubt aware of astrology and unwilling to share his own. He and his wife have travelled widely in the East, and Europe. They lived in India for a time, and now in Spain.

From Wikipedia:

"He studied the esoteric doctrines of the East and the West, and his imagery is drawn from a range of traditions including the cabalistic and the tantric, but embodied in forms from his own imagination which are immediately accessible. Here strange beasts encounter mysterious winged women, good and evil fight out their immemorial conflict, and in this weightless environment worlds are unmade and remade nearer to the heart's desire."

I found a YouTube presentation featuring an interview with Michael Parkes who discusses a new painting of Venus, and talks about cosmic symbolism - I found this fascinating. I doubt I shall fall foul of copyright if I embed the video, as he took part in it himself, and the embedding is freely available. So:



There's another video, "Homage to Michael Parkes" at YouTube, featuring many of his paintings.

Elsewhere there's information and illustration of Parkes' work HERE and HERE , or via Google Image. I'm conscious of copyright laws now, after my last week's post on the topic. I shall restrict myself to two pictures, to better illustrate the style of this artist. If the copyright police come to get me - well, - it's been fun, y'all!

THE SUMMIT


TUESDAY'S CHILD


(Small illustration, top, is a Michael Parkes' gallery, from one of the above links.)