Bea Parsons Solo Show

Parson's artwork envisions a multivalent, open-ended, and multicultural universe, folding in her own multi-sided background and experience. Of Cree, Scottish and French origins, and having lived in numerous very different places across Canada and the United States, she, in a considered manner, nonetheless makes free with signs and symbols that are sourced from all over, of many different places and times. European modern art mixes into elements drawn from her indigenous heritage seamlessly, and from the collective to the personal Parsons manages her materials effortlessly, always relying on a quirky sense of humor and a sly self-awareness to round off the phantasmagoria she has envisioned. She is as at home cracking jokes as she is depicting a nightmare.

She creates a strange and seductive world of dreamlike scenes and figures, characters and creatures, that run the gamut from the lyrical and poignant to the melancholy and grotesque, from distorted landscape to gridded abstraction. In effect, the work is very rich, employing a symbolist vocabulary both personal and historical to depict a marvelously realized demimonde. Slapstick comedy and sexy vignettes butt up against images of lost and lonely people and spirits, and sometimes genuinely baffling or frightening confrontations between the natural and the supernatural, the seemingly human with the apparently divine or demonic. The very space itself in Parson's monotypes warps and slides, flowing in waves of itself outward and inward, towards and from itself. 

These Dreams gathers a perfect little collection of "these dreams" together in New York City for the first time. 

Bea Parsons (b. 1981 in Saskatoon, Canada) is based in Tiohtia:ke/Montreal, Quebec, where she is represented by McBride Contemporain. She holds an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University of New York (2012) and a BFA in Painting & Drawing (2010) and Art Education (2008) from Concordia University. Parsons currently teaches full-time at Concordia University, Montreal, and previously at UC Davis (2016-2015) and the University of Texas, Austin (2013-2015). Children's art education plays a vital role in her career by teaching at Montreal's Visual Art Center and a teaching residency in Winnipeg's Art City. Parsons has participated in residencies, including the Catwalk Institute (NY), the Kala Institute (Berkley, CA), and the Wallace Stegner House (Eastend Saskatchewan, Canada). In 2012 she was the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Grant in New York City. Her work is included in numerous collections, including the Musée des Beaux-Arts Montreal, Musée d'art de Joliette, Hydro-Quebec, RBC, and Scotia Bank.