I’ve just started reading Nancy Boas book David Park – A Painter’s Life and was excited to see a post about Park on the front front page of The Painter’s Table today, leading to a nice blog entry by Left Bank Art, where writer Carl Belz posts a 1983 essay on a Park exhibition.
Park was a favorite of mine in my early painting years and after seeing the Diebenkorn Berkeley Years exhibit in San Francisco this summer it is hard not to have a restored crush on the Bay Area Figurative painters. Boa’s book is dense and printed in very, very small type which is leading to a slower than usual reading rate, but I am very thrilled to see someone like Park given his due in print. I am a little shocked to find that he died as such a young age (49).
I’m partial to this one:
David Park, Mother-in-Law, 1954-1955; oil on canvas, 26 in. x 19 1/2 in. (66.04 cm x 49.53 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Collection of Vicki and Kent Logan, fractional and promised gift to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; © Estate of David Park