Innovation in art

Local artist creates new style called ‘splatter paint’

By Jillian McMullen, Staff Writer

Mariella Veronika Elizabethe Parker, a Vancouver-based visual artist making waves in the arts community for developing a never-before-seen painting style, has sold out her debut show. The new style consists of the artist whipping paint, typically acrylic, onto a canvas with a sort of flicking motion. These actions result in a “splattered” effect—the effect from which Parker got her style’s name.

The Other Press was luckily able to catch Parker at her show in a rare moment alone to about her innovative style. Her work has been compared to Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, an association which Parker resents, stating that “His art all looked, like, the same. It had no message and therefore, like, no point.”

According to Parker, she feels her style is innovative not just for visual arts, but also for the performance arts. “My goal is to change how we, like, do art. Like, different movements create different splatters. Moving paint from brush to canvas by flicking my wrist instead of, like, throwing my arm sends a message regarding my investment. By privileging, like, certain movements over others, I privilege, like, certain aspects of my body. The style becomes a study of the body and how we, like, place limitations on it,” she explained. “Like, my goal is to broaden those capacities by exploring different ways to create paint splatters, you know?”

Parker explained that she broadens artistic horizons by employing different, unexpected tools to create new, complex techniques, two of which she calls “scooping” and “straw-blowing.”

“Scooping” involves Parker dipping the scoop-end of a plastic spoon into her paint of choice, rotating it so the bowl faces the canvas, pulling back on the bowl-end of the spoon, and quickly releasing it so the spoon catapults the paint onto the canvas. The “straw-blowing” involves Parker dipping the end of a straw into paint, removing it, and blowing into the clean end to transfer the paint onto the canvas.

While she has found her style rewarding, Parker has also found it emotionally taxing. “You know, I’m, like, really putting myself out there with this one. Like, I said this is about the body, but it’s, like, really about my body. My body is in those splatters, you know? Everything I feel, all my insecurities. Like, the attention has been nice, but sometimes I feel like people don’t appreciate what I’m doing.”

Although advance tickets for the show have sold out, tickets will be available at the door nightly. Her show runs from January 10 to 17th at the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver.