Top: Garden City, 12” X 14”, Oil on board, 2014;
Middle Four Clockwise:
Tender (detail), 12” X 14”, Oil on board, 2014;
Lucadendron Hillside (detail), 39” X 45”, Oil on canvas, 2013;
Urban Edge (detail), 8” X 8”, Oil on canvas, 2015;
Jenny Parsons in her Studio
Bottom: Palm, 12” X 14”, Oil on board, 2015
“For me, a landscape painting is not merely a visual representation of the world. It is a metaphor for the human condition, in all its mystery. I paint to try to make sense of the fragility of our world, the passing of time, and our shared experiences of light, air, colour and space. Painting the land continues to be a way of engaging with the strangeness of being here.”
Jenny Parsons is a South African landscape painter. After completing a Higher Diploma in Fine Art in Durban in 1988, Parsons moved to Cape Town where she now lives and works.
The city of Cape Town, with its areas of pristine nature interlocking with dense human habitation, provides a rich and diverse engagement for this artist. Parsons’ paintings of Cape Fynbos, vegetation that is endemic to the Cape Peninsula, are a significant part of her exploration of brush mark, colour and light.
In her urban paintings, Parsons seeks a connection with a landscape that is under increasing political and ecological pressure. She uses paint to describe her responses to the ways in which we inhabit the land. “When painting the landscape, I sense the fragility of the earth, but also hope for the constructive co-existence of people and biodiversity”.
Parsons’ latest paintings explore the existence of nature within the city. “Cultivated gardens, degraded public land and the grass verges of our suburbs are landscapes that lack the grandiosity of the pristine. The plants that inhabit these urban man-made spaces are a visual language all of their own. They speak of our history, our politics and the ways in which we engage with nature”.