Seven stories about Mark Parrish

Seven stories about Mark Parrish
Photos and words - Rachel Bardin

How I met Mark Parrish
My friend is working as a census enumerator in Crescent Beach and on his last stop one day, this guy, Mark Parrish, invites him in for a beer or three. Mark tells him about an art show he’s having at Genung’s fish camp. I met Mark at the show.

A few days after the show, Mark invited me to his home to look at more of his art and talk. His wife, Heather, was making dinner as their daughter sat peacefully on the couch. Mark and I went out to the garage, his workspace for the interview. He sat down in a vintage green chair and told me stories about clowns, Rockaway Beach, dancing, filmmaking and skateboarding.

Palatka and dancing
Mark wanted to be a dancer when he grew up. He had a space in his garage as a kid where he would practice every day after school. “I had a mat, I would do like, half an hour of my break-dance routine and then whatever sort of modern free stuff I would do. Did you ever see the movie Billy Elliot?”

Dancing wasn’t the most accepted past time for a young boy growing up in Palatka.
“It wasn’t that [his parents] wouldn’t let me go to dance classes, they just never enrolled me.”

So, Mark found other outlets for his creativity. “I kept plugging away at drawing and painting and I started skateboarding.”

Atlanta and New York City
Mark felt the need to leave his small hometown of Palatka. He got his BFA from the Atlanta College of Art. In 1999, he received his MFA from Parsons School of Design in New York City. He and his family moved to Crescent Beach less than a year ago.

The area has provided a good space to process the time of intense input that he experienced while living in the city. He’s been creating a lot and also selling his work steadily. He says of New York, “It’s a wonderful place in comparison to other cities. But it also made me realize I really love quiet organic spots as well.”

Sea shanties and sharks
At age 12, Mark dad taught him to surf. “He used to push me out right by those rocks at Marineland where all the damn sharks are,” he laughs. Many of Mark’s current pieces are of oceanic scenes and some involve sharks.

His approach is not the typical sunny palm tree, dune line, and horizon paintings so common to standard Florida galleries. Mark doesn’t try to disguise the medium he’s working with. He fully embraces the properties of paint, building up beautiful textures and bold contrasts. Many pieces depict the desolate wilderness of the sea; they invoke a very strong sense of place and atmosphere and are worlds away from a generic feeling of beach.

Office jobs and boxing clowns
Mark’s series of boxing clowns has probably drawn him the most attention. The genesis of that imagery began in an office job in Orlando.

He found an interesting way of rebellion by wearing the most absurd interpretation of the dress code that still qualified as within the rules. His dress shoes were steel-toed Doc Marten boots (which reminded him of clown shoes) and he wore bright collared shirts with suspenders and thrift store slacks. Parrish didn’t feel at home at the job and began drawing on post-it notes and memo cards while on hold on the phone. “I started doodling these clowns, like ‘This is kinda cool because I see myself as this sort of fumbling clown,’” he said.

Skateboarding and iMovie
Mark got into skateboarding at a young age. His primary interest in it was to be better than his cousin. It has stayed with him long past that rivalry and into adulthood and was partially responsible for getting him into film making.

He and a friend had collected years of skateboarding footage and finally, he taught himself iMovie and put together a video. He really likes the editing aspect of filmmaking, particularly the use of music. He has worked in theater and in film production and in a period of two years, made about eight short films and dozens of clips.

American Flags and expectations
In addition to his aquatic explorations, Mark recently did a series of American flag portraits. They are small and painted on wood and were debuted at the Genung’s show. He found that in his neighborhood of Rockaway, nearly all the homes flew the flag and he was, like most artists, influenced by his surroundings.

He did the series not so much as a patriotic statement but as a challenge. “It’s one thing that’s so not like the rest of my work because of the color and the movement.” He did feel the timing was interesting given that they were made after the wane of the uber-patriotism of the early 2000s.

He was curious to see what the response to them would be at the show. “I had this idea that they were going to be a hit but this is probably why I’m not a marketing executive.”