Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 1, 2008
CONTACT: Susan Strano / Marketing Coordinator
(802) 447-1571 Fax (802) 442-8305
info@benningtonmuseum.org
Leslie Parke's Paintings on View at the Bennington Museum
Painting light effects on natural surfaces such as flowers, shells, and water, and artificial surfaces such as paten leather, foil, glass, crystal, and silver is the focal point of the paintings by Leslie Parke. Selections of Parke’s work will be on exhibit at the Bennington Museum from May 10 through June 21. In her paintings she likes to see her subject matter as being ‘nothing’. “It is the ‘space between’, what you look at when you are not looking at anything; it is the air not the tree; the light not the landscape; the background not the subject that become the works. A painting succeeds for me when it seems as though the light is emanating from the canvas.” states Parke.

After returning from her stay as an artist-in-residence at the Claude Monet Foundation in Giverny, France, Parke relentlessly pursued the painting of light effects: light reflections, transparencies, translucencies, glitter, sparkle, shimmer. “Once I became accustomed to looking at the world through this filter, it affected how I saw everything.” An ideal landscape for Parke became one where you could see through the water to what was underneath; at the same time seeing the surface of the water because of the light reflections on it.

Parke was awarded a fellowship from Bennington College’s Master of Fine Arts Program, 1974-1976. She attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York, and Mills College In Oakland, California and the University of California, Berkeley. Her list of awards is extensive and includes an Artist Grant from the George Sugarman Foundation in 2005, a Jury Award from the Armory Art Center in Florida for Figurative Work 2002, and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation International Artist Award, a program of Arts International in Giverny, France.
The Bennington Museum is located at 75 Main Street (Route 9), Bennington, in The Shires of Vermont. The museum is just a short ride from Manchester, Williamstown, and eastern New York. Open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., the museum is closed on Wednesdays. Visit www.benningtonmuseum.org or call 802-447-1571 for more information about the museum