JENNIFER DEPPE PARKER, THROUGH A PRISM: “LIFE IS LIKE A COLLAGE”

Jennifer Deppe Parker creates what she calls “mixed-media macro portraits of the eyes of various individuals using pictured materials influenced by the subjects themselves.” Above, left: “Northern Pike,” 2022. Above, right: “Christy Turlington,” 2021. Both works made with acrylic on board, hand-cut magazine papers, molding paste, and gel media; each piece measures 12 x 12 inches. Photos courtesy of the artist

AN ARTIST’S METICULOUSLY CRAFTED IMAGES PROPOSE A NEW WAY OF SEEING — AND THINKING ABOUT — HER SUBJECTS

by Edward M. Gómez

Over the years, the New York-based artist Jennifer Deppe Parker has created a diverse body of work through whose various series of paintings and mixed-media productions an irrepressible, even explosive current of energy seems to flow.

Jennifer Deppe Parker, “Helena Christensen,” 2021, acrylic on board, hand-cut magazine papers, molding paste, gel media, 12 x 12 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist

In her collage works, Parker has taken the basic technique of cutting and pasting paper to fashion compositions that reach simultaneously in abstract and representational directions. The tension that implicitly emerges between those two approaches animates her finely crafted images. Like her paintings, with their bold, lines and sometimes, literally, tempestuous vibes — her series “The Day God Spoke” is all tornadoes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters — her collage works do not hold back in their exploration of their genre’s expressive potential.