The semi-finalist is: trude parkinson

6/3/2026

The semi-finalist is: trude parkinson

Constellated
2022, oxidized silver leaf, wax on Kitikata paper, 9” x 12”

Trude Parkinson doesn’t just take a long view of history. Hers is prolonged. Cosmic, even. Now in her 80’s, she has stopped measuring time in terms of decades and centuries. Even millennia are inadequate for the sense of history she intends to evoke in her recent work. Instead, her preferred timeline is built on light years, a measurement that allows her to consider what we were long before our planet formed and what we will eventually become. From Parkinson’s point of view, stardust is our collective ancestor as well as our shared destiny. For all of the differences and disputes taking place on earth, it’s oddly comforting to know that we at least all have that in common.

Influenced to varying degrees by literature, art from around the world, Buddhism, astronomy, and chemistry, Trude Parkinson has also become practiced at loosening her grip and allowing chance to be an ingredient in the making of her work. This never, of course, involves relinquishing complete control over a process. Her choice of media and her subjects are deeply considered and thoroughly researched, from Nihonga painting techniques to the early photographs of stars by Edwin Hubble. What intrigues me most about her process, however, is how she has learned to let go so that her images can hold more. Like raku firing or the ever-developing patina on a Richard Serra sculpture, Parkinson’s surfaces are the result of using materials and methods that cannot be comprehensively controlled. What she conjures with them is a fleeting sense of form taking up residence in images rich with chromatic intensity and an iridescent shimmer. In Winged House from 2020, oxidized silver leaf and mineral pigments are used to summon an otherworldly mix of recognizable shapes and the intangible. Barely There from 2016 uses a similar process on recycled kimono silk, a substrate that appears delicate but is in fact quite durable. It’s a fitting surface for an artist whose work embraces both fragility and rigour in order to portray a sense of our place in the universe.

I’m very happy to be able to share my interview with Trude Parkinson. We started our conversation almost two years ago, so it’s especially satisfying to now have it available here on The Semi-Finalist.

- David Schell, 2026

Portrait of the artist with work from Aural Frequencies, her recent exhibition at Nine Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

The Semi-Finalist: Can you talk a little bit about starting out as an English Major and how you wound up as a visual artist?

Trude Parkinson: My decision to become an English major grew out of a passion for reading acquired as a child. My transition into visual arts was the realization that my passion for the visual arts was even greater. I needed to be grounded in the tactile world of object making. I learned about the world from reading. I believe my hearing loss, inherited from both parents, made it more difficult than usual for me to understand spoken words and phrases, even as a child. Written words provided a visual translation.

The visual arts were also a major part of my life when I was young. Both my mother and my great aunt, Kate, on my mother’s side, were visual artists who supported my interest. My mother attended the Oakland College of Arts and Crafts as a teen-ager, drew beautifully, and was involved in the California faience pottery movement. I learned to draw from her. She was not directive, but appeared authentically amazed at whatever I came up with. Art supplies were always available, and we were encouraged to leave work out so we could return to it. She enrolled me in a watercolor class when I was four, and I still remember the visceral sense of joy at painting outdoors on large pieces of paper attached to an easel. From the beginning, I loved the materials. Later, when I was accepted to the University of California, Berkeley, my family couldn’t afford the tuition. My grandfather (my mother’s father) offered to pay my way - on the condition that I not become an art major. He wanted to support my education but wanted me to be more stable and self-sufficient than my mother and his sister. I sidestepped the issue by majoring in British and Irish literature where I could immerse myself in reading.

I became mesmerized by the fact that marks on a page could give access into the lives and thoughts of others, just as the accumulation of abstract marks in the visual arts could give rise to a recognizable image. I’ve always been intrigued by the question, “What came first, the image or the word?” Both gave me joy. The transition into becoming a visual artist occurred through an accumulation of significant experiences. Among them was a visit to a van Gogh exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco while I was a teen-ager. I was transfixed by van Gogh’s reed pen drawings and the realization that I wasn’t just viewing marks that accumulated into a field, but was witness to remnants of human energy left by traces of a reed pen made by someone standing in a field trying to record the sense of being alive in that place in that moment. I began to draw with reed pens and sticks dipped in ink.

Offerings For Outer Space
1984, collage with found papers on plexiglas 60" x 42"

Continued:
Another was a close reading of Paul Klee’s painting, Fish Magic, for a term paper while I was a student at U.C. Berkeley. I chose the painting because I didn’t understand it. I analyzed the painting on my own terms. Through an inventory of formal elements, the painting revealed itself to me. In this way I began to understand painting as a visual language. Another close reading exposed me to a deeper understanding of the purpose of art. When literary critic, Mark Schorer (New Criticism), led us through the text of James Joyce’s The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, I identified with Stephen Daedalus (gender aside), and took to heart Joyce’s aesthetic theory the best I understood it at the time: the role of art is to create aesthetic arrest, letting the world fall away. According to Stephen, in a quest for beauty, the artist creates “…a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable…” Joyce’s ideas, articulated by Stephen, touched the core of a spiritual need in me, and I adopted the idea of art as a sacred undertaking.

So I graduated with a B.A. in English. It took awhile before I thought of myself as a visual artist. I married at 24 and my art life was interrupted. My first child, a son, was followed by two more children, fraternal twins - a boy and a girl. I needed to devote time to care for my new family, but I also realized that I needed to take care of myself, stay connected to the adult world, and feed my intellectual and creative interests. As I searched for something that gave me energy and strength, drawing and painting emerged as front runners.

Wedding Riddle
1986, mixed media collage, 40" x 30"

S-F: I’m also interested in the trajectory or your work, starting out figurative and ending up zen abstract.

TP: My interest in figure drawing began in childhood under the auspices of my mother and as a way to combat the turmoil in my large, chaotic family. In order to survive and to compensate for my hearing loss, I learned to read body language. Through the process of drawing people, I attempted to understand their interior lives.

My MFA Thesis show, though, was an installation of mixed-media collages sandwiched between panels of broken glass - a foray into abstraction around the theme of communication. The literal fragmentation of materials to create collages with torn papers reflected the world I was experiencing more directly than the painted illusion of fragmentation. With three small children, I also had only fragments of time, and I began to make small collages with torn, folded, and burned papers at a scale I could manage during the time available. In my mind, each collage signified a human being, although materially abstracted. Each had its own character. I began gathering the small collages into large format communities, generating themes around the human condition and communication. At the time, my inspiration came from following the trajectory of the Voyager Space Probe. I marveled at the gold plated recording of undecipherable images, sounds, and writings that was sent into outer space to be intercepted and interpreted by an unknown intelligence. Paper airplanes began to populate my collages and they began to take symbolic flight with titles related to the myth of Daedalus and Icarus.

Icarus
1987, mixed media collage, 40" x 60"

TP (continued):
Silver became more important in my work. Alchemically, silver’s reflective quality signifies the mirroring of consciousness in the transformation from a base metal into enlightenment. In many cultures, silver represents the moon and the female principle. My collages were attempting to make metaphorical trips into outer space. I purchased Japanese handmade papers covered with silver leaf, and I collected milagros. These religious folk charms are used for healing purposes and votive offerings in Mexico, Latin America, and on the Iberian Peninsula. They are also found on the island of Crete and in Greece, where they are known as Tamas. I’m intrigued by the beauty of their immediacy. I included them in my collages as symbolic protective devices. Later, the experience of living and working in Arizona and elsewhere, influenced my collages, drawings and paintings in both their abstract and figurative states. Sketches of ancient Ancenstral Puebloan pictographs and petroglyphs in Canyon de Chelly inspired my materials, if not my imagery, and kept me connected to figuration.

A Mexican milagro
Oxidized silver

TP (continued):
At the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England, I sketched sails detached from ships that hung unfurled from the ceiling. These abstract shapes inspired folded paper structures in my collages. A residency with Nancy Graves at the Santa Fe Art Institute resulted in a trip to Crete to visit the Minoan female terracotta figures on view at the Heraklion Museum. I spent days in the Heraklion, drawing these tiny figures where the hand that made them was visible in the pinched clay. These figures (approx. 2000–1100 BCE) found on Crete are religious and cultural artifacts, mostly female, that served as protective charms, much like milagros. Many of these votives, found in peak sanctuaries in and near open volcanic rifts, display expressive gestures of worship honoring nature deities. Eventually, my drawings from the Heraklion found their way into the figurative work that was to come.

Incantation (left)
2000, book with words, prints,
string, cobblestone, and watercolor made
from Oregon mineral pigments, 12” x 6” x 5”
and
Minoan Drawings (right), 1992

TP (continued):
Meanwhile, I was selected as a visiting artist to teach painting at Princeton in the Art Department. I lived in Manhattan, where I readily absorbed everything art related - every gallery, every museum - revitalizing my interest in painting. Then, in 1994, I moved to Portland. Imbued with the spirit of Crete, the Minoan terracottas, votives, and icons encountered there, I used this opportunity to return to figure painting. Psychologically, I was investigating questions related to my new life in Portland. In that context, I began a series of figurative paintings exploring aspects of my parentage and my German heritage. I painted from old family photographs, not knowing where I was headed. The paintings became double-sided, where both front and back were intended to be seen. On one side there was a painted semi-abstract image of a figure whose destiny I had changed. Onto the other side, I put a collage with photographs and words copied onto silver leaf paper. I wanted to question the relationship between the imagined and the factual, the power of images in relation to words. I thought of the human body with all its vitality, mutability, and scars, as a material composition of compounds bound to disperse yet infused with spirit and soul. I continued to explore materials and techniques that seemed to best express my view of our human condition.

Woman Painting (front)
1995, acrylic on panel, 10" x 10"
and
Woman painting (back)
1995, collage, copper, 10" x 10"

In the figurative bodies of work that followed, I wanted to convey meaning beyond the immediate and personal. I wanted the idea of a person, rather than a recognizable image. So I took photographs of family and friends shown from the back and painted their images into abstracted landscapes as though they were walking through the painting into an unknown destination. Eventually, the landscape disappeared and the figures remained. Then the figures disappeared and only their alter egos or their shadows were left. Finally, the entire painting became ground where a glimpse of silver is revealed behind the veil of paint suggesting a realm beyond the purely material, which could be considered “zen abstract.”

Green Man (front)
1995, double-sided painting, oil on panel, 10" x 10"

S-F: I’m fascinated by your desire to incorporate oxidation (or is the term photo-oxidation more accurate?) into your painting process. Can you describe what it is, how you first became interested in it, and how you made it your own?

TP: In simple chemical terms, oxidation is defined as the loss of electrons by a molecule, atom, or ion resulting in an increase in oxygen present. In my artwork, I am interested in the visual and metaphorical possibilities of the chemical process of oxidation on iron, copper, and primarily silver. These metals have inherent cultural meaning in themselves. The transformation that takes place as a result of oxidation changes the surface color, texture, and value, and therefore, their meaning. Alchemy made psychological and philosophical use of these transformations. I make metaphorical use of the concept of transformation. I first used found copper with an oxidized blue-green patina as frames for the double-sided paintings that I hung from the ceiling by copper wire. This heavy metal is a known conductor, so oxidized copper became a time-based metaphor that symbolically connected the earth-bound paintings to a higher realm. Then I began to experiment with oxidation on iron in a series of prints. The oxidation of iron takes place in contact with water and oxygen, accelerated by salt, resulting in rust or red iron oxide. I used this method to create rusted iron plates. Then I used stencils to create simple geometric shapes, and printed the rust layer over a flat layer of bole, a colored clay ground used under the application of silver or gold leaf. The rust provided fascinating variations in color and texture over the flatness of the bole. There is a saying that “rust never stops.” However, the oxidized layer was so thin, it has remained pristine. Since iron is essential in our bodies as transport for oxygen, and our bodies are in a constant state of oxidation, I printed 50 images for my fiftieth birthday in honor of the process that was taking place in my body.

My desire to explore the visual properties of oxidized silver leaf, however, came from a life-changing chance encounter with a NASA exhibition at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California, featuring Edwin Hubble’s early silver halide photographs of the Andromeda Nebula. These silver images took my breath away. In Hubble’s revolutionary early photographs, taken through his personal telescope, pinpoints of oxidized silver remained where starlight had literally transformed the silver halide photographic surface, leaving little piles of oxidized silver dust. I was touched to the core by this vision of tangible starlight. Since then, I’ve tried to find a way of painting that suggest both our current sentience and our origins in vast star-lit timeless space. In my first experiments with the process of oxidizing silver leaf, I adhered Italian or German silver leaf to a surface of paper, silk, or recycled kimono fabric with a layer of water based size. Then, I painted with a liquid solution of liver of sulfur (sulfured potash) to trigger the chemical reaction that forms a thin layer of silver sulfide on the surface of the silver leaf, essentially tarnishing it to create a patina. I used liquid liver of sulfur like watercolor - painting with watercolor brushes, puddling and pooling, tipping, turning the surface, spattering, using occasional stencils, and any method of painting that might come close to resembling the idea of an earthly accretion of oxidized stardust. Due to light reflecting off both the top of the sulfide layer and the silver beneath, the tarnish layer can progress through a range of colors - yellowish gold, a reddish brown, purple, and blue to black. Color can be controlled by the amount of water added to the liver of sulfur. Further oxidation can be controlled with water. After the painting is dry, oxidation can be stopped by applying a thin layer of Renaissance Wax developed by the British Museum for that purpose.

One of Edwin Hubble’s early silver halide photographs of the Andromeda Nebula

TP (continued): For my subject matter, I took photographs of cast shadows. At first I used my shadow or those of friends, then shadows of Buddhist sculptures that I found on the walls of The Metropolitan Museum of Art during trips to New York. I also took photographs of Etruscan figures and their shadows in the Guarnacci Etruscan Museum in Volterra, Italy, including that of Shadow of the Night, a favorite of Giacometti’s. I took photographs of dancers, Linda K. Johnson and Eiko Otake, trying to capture shadows in motion. These images and the imagery from my drawings of Minoan terracottas done at the Heraklion Museum found their way into these paintings. A large oxidized silver leaf shadow painting on silk, created from the image of a Minoan figure, hangs loosely in my studio where it casts a shadow on the wall with the over-sized presence of a goddess.

Shadow of the Night
Approximately 300 BCE, copy of Etruscan sculpture in the
Guarnacci Etruscan Museum in Volterra, Italy

She Who Is
2018, oxidized silver leaf, Renaissance Wax on silk 80" x 24"

S-F: When I visited your studio you mentioned that you were currently working with some water based Japanese pigments. Talk about that.

TP: Through the process of oxidation, I found the materials and techniques that support the images and ideas that have haunted me since I first began painting and making art. But I was frustrated because sometimes I wanted to paint over the oxidized silver leaf but couldn’t. When paint was applied over the leaf, the water based size used to apply the silver lifted and dissolved the silver. Then I learned about a Japanese method of painting that uses an animal hide glue to adhere silver. These materials and methods allow paint to be successfully applied over the silver leaf, oxidized or not. I found and took a workshop, Nihonga: Then and Now, given by Judith Kruger, a multidisciplinary American artist known for her alchemic painting, prints and mixed media installations, who initiated the course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I fell in love with the natural pigments and glues and took her course several times. Unlike other methods I had tried, the Japanese methods and mediums solve the problem of painting over silver leaf. This style of painting, Nihonga (Japanese Painting), has been used since the Meiji period (1868-1912) and after WWII to distinguish traditional Japanese painting from western oil painting. It uses finely ground mineral pigments and/or sumi ink on paper or silk. The process can incorporate gold or silver leaf. The silver leaf is sometimes oxidized. There is now world-wide interest in Nihonga by Japanese and non-Japanese artists.

(TP continued): The method of painting is water-based, using paint made from natural minerals, shells, corals, and precious stones such as azurite, malachite, and cinnabar. These minerals and stones are ground in gradations from fine to coarse and mixed with a binder usually made from a deer hide glue solution. The same solution preserved with alum is used as a size to apply gold or silver leaf. A powder made from cured oyster or other bivalve shells is used as a white ground or translucent over-painting.

In my process, Japanese Komohada (cloud like) mashi (paper), made from a blend of hemp, kozo (mulberry), and ganpi fibers, is folded around a panel like origami and attached at the edges. The paper is prepared with layers of hide glue size over which silver leaf is applied and left as is, or oxidized. Another layer of size prepares the silver leaf for over-painting. Powdered pigments are mixed with a hide glue binder to form paint. Layers of color are applied one at a time over each other, allowing silver to show through accidentally or as desired. These multiple layers and washes can be used to great effect, depending on the coarseness or fineness of the powdered pigments. The surface dries hard as a rock and is archival. In addition to liver of sulfur, silver leaf can be ‘fumigated’ with powdered sulfur.

Eventually, I did a series of over 100 small paintings with both figurative and abstract imagery as experiments, to see what the possibilities were. I made a short video, Rocks Housed Churches, where images of paintings merge so the ghost of each image lingers in the presence of the one that follows. As each image appears and vanishes, one thing becomes another. Spoken word poetry in the video provides a counterpoint to the imagery. My intent was to provide perspective on the impermanence of things, all made of the same stuff - an accretion of stardust.

Above: Blue Buddha
2016, oxidized silver leaf on recycled kimono fabric, 10" x 10"

Below: Chrysalis
2020, oxidized silver leaf, mineral pigments, Sumi ink on paper on panel, 6" x 6"

S-F: I’m also interested in your obsession with the history of the universe, how we perceive light, and how humans fit into the bigger picture. Can you talk about how you started down this path and where it’s led you?

TP: I was raised in a family that was agnostic and did not go to church, but I was encouraged to explore ideas common to all world religions. When I did go to church with my Catholic cousins, I was transfixed by the ritual, the art, the music, all in Latin at the time - a complete mystery to me. I wanted to be a part of this mystery but was an outsider. I wondered about language and image. Besides the question of what came first, word or image, I wondered about thoughts, unspoken words, and what came before nothing? What was I before I was something? Basic questions about being human. I accepted that there was a mystery beyond anything I could know. My interest in the bigger picture, the history of the universe, stems from these questions, from an interest in the mythologies of origin stories, a curiosity about pre-language images, and images as language.

Along the way, I found that Buddhist philosophy resonated with me, although I’m not officially a Buddhist since I haven’t taken vows. In my paintings, I am still searching for a process and a visual counterpart to the concepts of impermanence and emptiness as I understand them—the idea that existence is transient and all phenomena are essentially empty, contingent on all else. I want my materials and images to reflect these ideas and act as a conduit between substance and immateriality, between earth and infinite space, between the representation of the body and its absence.

The materials I'm using - mineral pigments, sulfur, and silver - connect the microcosm to the macrocosm materially and symbolically. They are found throughout the cosmos and originate in the explosions of supernovae and the violent merging of neutron stars. The heavy metal, silver, has been found in the earth for as long as we know. It exhibits the highest reflectivity of any metal. It was considered by alchemists to be a noble metal. On earth, sulfur gets trapped in dust particles, but can also be found in conglomerate rocks in the crust and as boiling sulfur in the core of our planet. Sulfur is fire and brimstone. When lit on fire, it burns blue and is gaseous and poisonous. Alchemists believed that sulfur was the animating force in all matter and that varying the proportions of sulfur and mercury could transmute base metals into gold. Interestingly, silver and sulfur are often found together - veins of silver next to sulfur. Imagery based on the idea of shadow also acts as a conduit, a visual counterpart to the concepts of impermanence and emptiness. A shadow is impermanent, empty of substance, and transient. We perceive shadow in terms of light. The source of light, the sun, when blocked by a substance results in absence of light, forming a cast shadow, its clarity determined by the intensity of light and the density of the substance. The shape of the thing that blocks light becomes the shape that identifies the thing - not a reflection but a distortion, a bit like memory, which distorts the actual occurrence.

In his essay on my work for a catalog documenting the exhibition, Emanations, Peter Frank says: "Responding to the existential conundrum posed by the condition of the shadow – an entirely disembodied absence of light affirming the physical presence of a human being – Parkinson has considered the shadow from every epistemological vantage, intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic, symbolic - relying on and often motivated by a broad array of extraneous sources, from modern literature to traditions of religious art, to help define her comprehension of the image... These images play on our sense of fragility and mortality. They remind us that we, too, are made of stardust and precious metals, that water is as formidable as gold, and that some of who we are endures.”

Above: Barely There
2016, oxidized silver leaf, wax on recycled kimono silk, 10" x 10"

Below: Winged Home
2020, oxidized Japanese silver leaf, mineral pigments on paper on panel, 6" x 6"

S-F: Your recent work is a fascinating blend of letting go, chance, and a pretty sophisticated understanding of chemistry and physics. The question that keeps rolling around in my head is: “are there pieces that you make that simply don’t work? Do happenstance and science occasionally yield uninteresting results?” I think I’m trying to ask how you center yourself - or not - in your process.

TP: I work slowly, allowing time to seep into my images. I search for accidents as though they were signs, accepting imperfection and ambiguity. Yes, uninteresting results are always in the works, but that means the dialogue with materials is still in progress. Occasionally, pieces refuse to take part in the conversation, ask to be excused or let alone. How to represent something that can’t be represented is an ancient endeavor. In my process, the work is brought forth, nurtured, and, in spite of all efforts, escapes. In the attempt, there is progression, disaster after disaster, promising a glimpse of something vaguely called truth or perfection, or, perhaps, beauty. Destruction points the way. I try to catch what escapes. There are near misses. I approach again and make inquiries, attempting to portray the passing moment, to approach divinity, to pray with a brush until something breathes and comes alive in the image.

My inclinations align with the Northwest artists who sought to understand the sacred through Asian aesthetics and philosophy, who searched for consciousness through intuition. In the spirit of their efforts, I have attempted a manifesto to keep me grounded:

First, follow the commandment of mysticism, from the Greek word muein: “Shut the eyes and shut the mouth to let the mystery in.” Looking sideways is a start. So is silence. And listening.

Second, obey the capricious messages that arise in the body: Follow the body’s weather - volatile, turbulent, discontented. Make room for the rhythm of the beating heart, the quiet space between each beat, the joy in breathing, the reprieve in the interstices between catastrophes.

Third, absorb the language of materials: Those I prefer are ancient in origin, made of stardust manifest as mineral pigments, powders of colored earth along with silver leaf, glues, and brushes. I gravitate toward materials, techniques, and rituals that captivate my soul and challenge my contemporary sensibilities.

Above: Inaudible Frequency
2025, oxidized silver leaf, mineral pigments,
16" x 13"

Below: Available Frequency
2025, oxidized silver leaf, mineral pigments,
16" x 13"

S-F: Who are you looking at (living or dead)?

TP: The art that inspires me is often ancient and communal rather than contemporary and singular, anonymous rather than signed. I think of myself as a visual detective, exploring the physical world for artifacts and images—clues that speak to me about the workings of deep space and infinite time, about the mystery of our existence. I am indebted to the many philosophical and religious sources that inspire my artwork and contribute to my understanding of the world.

Books:
James Joyce, The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
Carl Sagan, etc., Murmurs of Earth
Roberto Calasso, Ardor
Karl Jung, Aion, Chapter II, The Shadow
Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory

Anonymous:
Ancestral Puebloan pictographs and petroglyphs
Cultural artifacts, such as the sails in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, England
Minoan Terracottas
Milagros and Damas
Icons, fronts and backs
Retablos
Ex-votos
Etruscan sculptures, Shadow of the Night
Buddhist sculptures
Shadows
Dancers
Meditative Tantric paintings
Close up views of Nihonga paintings
Images that turn up in dreams or in the act of painting

Artists (Named):
Robert Fludd for black
Fra Angelico for beauty and simplicity
Edwin Hubble for early silver halide photographs of the Andromeda Galaxy
Kazimir Malevich for spiritual integrity
Roberto Morandi for color and repetition
Mark Rothko for color and concept
Cy Twombly for permission
Sigmar Polke for painted chemistry
Gordon Park for semi-abstract figures
Etel Adnan for courage and honesty
Cora Cohen for materiality
Makato Fujimura for slow art and the metaphysical
Hiroshi Senju for pouring
Judith Kruger for mineral pigment experiments
Yoonhee Choi for folded collage drawings
V for energy, color, and use of space

Above: Dancing With Kintsugi
2020, oxidized silver leaf, mineral pigments, gold leaf on paper on panel, 6" x 6"

Below: Eiko Otake
2019, In rehearsal at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art,
photographed with her permission

S-F: What’s Next for you (shows, residencies, projects, etc.)?

TP: In a recent exhibition at Nine Gallery, Aural Frequencies, prior to getting a cochlear implant, I chose to explore hearing through the silence of visual language. In my mind, an imprecise cloud of translation bridges the two. I built the installation around new paintings and older work related to hearing that had accumulated in my studio, adding the subtext of memory: Cast pigmented wax ear sculptures, small oxidized silver paintings from the exhibition, Plea, milagros of ears, a book with a burned opening and fragmented words, word collages, and more.

In new paintings, using oxidized silver leaf and mineral pigments, I want to suggest the possibility of visual conduits into another world as though a permeable skin of paint has the capacity to hear and listen, wise beyond our understanding. As I continue to make new work, I’m also downsizing and archiving, currently making books and boxes as archival objects and works of art containing small drawings and sketches that I come across. These books and boxes will become gifts and will contain instructions for their dispersal.

A project coming up, Between Times: Artists and Generation, facilitated by Carnation Contemporary Gallery, is designed to create opportunities for an intergenerational exchange between emerging artists with more established practitioners (focusing on artists under 30 and over 50). I was nominated by one of Carnation’s gallery members, and selected by the curator, Georgina Ruff. Georgina is a writer, art historian, and founder of MFA:NW, an organization that supports recently graduated MFAs and rural Northwest art ecologies. Georgina is curating a group exhibition at Carnation in June, 2026, and will choose from works already created. The show will be professionally documented, opening on Saturday June 6th and ending on the 28th, there will be an opportunity to participate in a panel discussion on one of the weekends in June. I’m delighted and grateful to be part of this project.

In December 2026, a show of my new work will be on exhibition at Nine Gallery, and I continue to be represented by Augen Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

After Hubble
2022, oxidized silver leaf, wax on paper, 9"x12"

You can see more of Trude Parkinson's work:

On her website: www.trudeparkinson.com/

At Augen Gallery

In the collection of the Portland Art Museum

On the Riverside Art Museum (CA) website. Parkinson's work was the subject of an exhibition in 2017

On Vimeo: vimeo.com/trudeparkinson (includes "Rocks Housed Churches" (2024); "Shadow Dance" (2017); "Ghosts" (2016); an episode of Oregon Art Beat, feature Parkinson and her work (2016); "Elusives" (2014).

Many of the photos in this interview have been generously supplied by the artist and were taken by Bill Bachhuber, Gene Faulkner, and Dan Kvitka. The studio shots at the end of the interview are mine.