Ray Allen Parker was born in San Diego, California but grew up in rural Egypt, Arkansas. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Arkansas, where he took his first painting class. Following a three-decade career in retail communications and advertising, he returned to his lifelong interest in portrait and figure painting. Ray lives and works in Fayetteville, Arkansas, with his wife Mary Jean. I first met Ray at the Arkansas Arts Center in 2018. He was one of the artists invited to speak to the Contemporaries and Collectors groups about their award-winning entries into the 60th Delta Exhibition. His portraits are BOLD and compelling. They draw you in from across the room demanding that you ‘listen’ to the subject’s story. Ray is represented by Boswell-Mourot Fine Art in Little Rock. Additional examples of his paintings can be found on Instagram and his website.

AAS: You describe yourself as a portrait and figure painter. This sounds pretty far removed from your 30-year career in advertising. Why portraits? Do you think your work in communications and advertising influenced your style, or has that evolved since you began painting full time?

RP:  I remember distinctly drawing a surreptitious portrait of my teacher on the first day of the first grade ... which, to my chagrin, she snatched off my desk and hung over the blackboard to great laughter. It was my first lesson that art is in the eyes of the beholder. [Laughs] I also recall copying encyclopedia portraits of mythological characters, presidents and athletes for the covers of my parent/teachers-night folders. So, the interest has always been there. When I retired from corporate business and resumed studying art, I knew immediately what I wanted to do ... which was to paint portraits. Unbeknownst to me, corporate advertising and communications for JCPenney were a fertile training ground for me. My first editorial assignment for the company was writing profiles of interesting store personnel all across the country, trying to understand their store roles, their personalities and lives, trying to bring them to life in a relatable, meaningful, memorable way. Which is essentially my goal in painting a portrait. Later I directed a large advertising photo studio supporting all the corporation's photography needs. There I learned to evaluate an image for composition, color correctness, contrast, saturation, etc. – the same thing I do standing in front of my canvas painting each day. 

“In life, we often avert our eyes to protect our self from sustained, direct scrutiny. It can be intense. And that's what I strive for in my paintings – the intensity of that person.”

AAS: Have you always painted in large scale and larger than life size?

RP:  My first painting in my one and only undergraduate art class at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 1972 was a copy of Vermeer's Woman Holding a Balance. It was probably 8" x 8". So, I started almost as small as possible. [Laughs] When I restarted my painting studies following retirement in 2011, I was drawn to monumental paintings after seeing an image of Jenny Saville's Hyphen, which is 108” x 144”. I had seen Jacques Louis David's epic Napoleon court paintings in the Louvre, but nothing contemporary, nothing like Saville's two massive heads together. I was stunned by their overwhelming scale and power and began looking at other works of giant scale and musing about attempting something like that. Then about six years ago I finally worked up the courage to create two very large works based on photographs of my family and rural Arkansas. That set my course. 

AAS: Your portraits are always very colorful, yet your subject’s ‘pose’ is not always filled with much emotion. What do you look for in a model and do you give any instruction?

RP:  I recall what Chantal Joffe, one of my favorite portrait artists, said about painting: "There are people for whom the painting or writing of another person is almost more real than their life. You think as them; you feel it so intensely. It’s completely human to have that intense over-identification. Otherwise I don’t know what the point is." It's rather like reading a novel or biography and wondering what it would be like to know a character or be like them. I always paint people I know and have some idea about who they are, which I want to portray, an idea maybe they don't even know or realize about themselves: That they are beautiful or courageous or full of grace or possessing some kind of humbling dignity. I try not to give too much direction, especially regarding wardrobe. I want them to be themselves. Hopefully in the hundreds of photos I take, there will be one I can paint from that reflects who I think they are.

AAS: How long does a typical portrait take to complete?

“As an artist you spend many hours alone, just you and your paint and obsessions, and sometimes the family dog.”

RP:  A large-scale work, 72" x 60" say, may take six to eight weeks from start to finish, from the lumberyard to the final varnish. I shoot the photography of all my subjects, usually 300-500 frames for each person. I composite the images (the head from this one, arms from this one, etc.) and scan them to an iPad, which allows me to enlarge or reduce detail to paint from.

AAS: Many (most) of your portraits have the subject looking directly at the viewer. They are looking at me almost more than I am looking at them. It is somewhat an uneasy feeling but very captivating. The expression you deliver in the eyes alone is remarkable. Did that gift come naturally or was it something that you have studied and worked on?

RP:  I instinctively gravitate to the direct gaze. The eyes are the windows of the soul, no? [Laughs] The direct gaze is confrontational and powerful. In life, we often avert our eyes to protect our self from sustained, direct scrutiny. It can be intense. And that's what I strive for in my paintings -- the intensity of that person. One of the things I learned from my photo-studio-direction days is that the photographer's set up (his soft boxes or ring lights, fill cards, sometimes the photographer himself) is reflected in the eyes of the model. Look closely in the eyes of the model on a fashion magazine. The studio world is reflected there. So, I've been trained to peer intensely into the eyes of my painting subjects.  

AAS: Are most of your portraits commissioned works? I always wonder how an artist feels about selling a work and maybe never seeing it again. With portraits – especially family portraits – does selling to a ‘stranger’ give you any pause?

RP:  The works I exhibit or show on my website are all non-commissioned works. I paint them because I am interested or fascinated or curious about the people I choose as subjects and hope that others will share my fascination or attraction and buy the painting because of that. My joy or passion is in creating the painting, not in keeping the painting. That feeling usually lasts only as long as I am working on the piece. So, selling that work gives me joy that someone sees or feels as much as I did in creating it. Commissioned works don't generate the same kind of feeling. 

AAS: The portrait of your son, Postpunk, received high acclaim at the 60th Annual Delta Exhibition, earning the AAC Contemporaries Award. Can you speak about that experience and your other experiences with juried shows? What does just being selected mean to an artist?

RP:  When they were announcing the award winners of the exhibition, Postpunk flashed on the huge screen and my wife began slapping me on the leg before I could even process what was happening. It was very exciting, uplifting really, and humbling. As an artist you spend many hours alone, just you and your paint and obsessions, and sometimes the family dog. [Laughs] All you desire as an artist is an opportunity to share what you've created and some sort of validation for the quality of the effort you've put into it. So, juried shows are very important in that regard. They provide an audience, recognition, validation ... and they also can stoke interest in your other work and build community between with other artists. I've met and built friendships with many artists and exhibition viewers that way, particularly through the Delta Exhibitions I've participated in.

“I didn't want to miss the opportunity to have the life I wanted. The world of art is filled with slow learners and late starters. Don't miss the ride.”

AAS: You became full-time artist relatively late in life. What advice do you have for others who may have always wanted to paint but life got in the way? 

RP:  It's never too late to become the person you always wanted to be when you grow up. (Laughs) I took a 40-year hiatus from art ... through family and career concerns, reluctance, lack of time and confidence. But I began to wonder if I had done myself a great disservice or given up on something too soon that was essential to me. It was humbling to say the least to restart my art studies at age 60, thanks to a wonderful program at UA Fayetteville. I wondered if it wasn't too late or if I ever really had talent. But it was important to me to persist, to believe in myself even when I thought no one else did. The photographer Duane Michaels has said, this is it, this is the ride. I didn't want to miss the opportunity to have the life I wanted. The world of art is filled with slow learners and late starters. Don't miss the ride.

AAS:  Your latest paintings are so-called "secular altarpieces," inspired by Renaissance and Gothic religious masterworks. Your subjects are elevated or acknowledged as having grace and dignity by this religious framing, but they don't seem to see themselves in this same way. Why choose this 400-year-old format to portray them?

RP:  I saw Velasquez's The Crucified Christ at the Prado in Madrid a couple of summers ago. The painting was overwhelming in its majesty and beauty, knee-weakening in its power and scale. I went back the next day to see it again. I decided then I wanted to strive for the same beauty and power for my work. Over time that desire merged with how I viewed my subjects, and I came up with the idea of a series of altarpieces as a way to seize that naturalistic monumentality for the people I paint. They, of course, don't overtly see themselves as full of the grace, dignity and rebirth of self I try to depict. They're probably a little embarrassed by this depiction of themselves. But I wish to create meditations on their all-too-human connections with us. Renaissance masters made saints appear like human beings. I try to make my friends and neighbors appear like saints. So we may locate within them — and within ourselves — something overwhelming and larger than life.