**[Gina Parr](https://www.cohart.com/ginaparr/profile)** is a bestselling painter and photographer. Trained as a Fine Artist, graduating with a First Class BA Honours Degree, Parr went on to Chelsea College of Art to study Production Set Design, leading to a 25 year career. 

She returned to work as a full time Artist in 2007. Since then, she has exhibited in galleries and art fairs in the UK, Denmark, Italy and France, has completed commissions in The Middle East, Belgium, London and the USA, has had her work featured on set of numerous British Television dramas and was selected for the Royal Western Academy Photography Open 2023, the ING Discerning Eye 2023 at The Mall Galleries and the 2024 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition London. Her works are held in collections worldwide, including Keble College Oxford and Director of Jestico + Whiles Architects London. 

She has recently been collaborating with Glen Scotia Whisky, part of the Loch Lomond Group Glasgow, to produce a commissioned painting for their special whisky release in 2025.

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##### Can you walk us through your creative process? Which materials and techniques have become integral to your work?

When painting I'm completely immersed in the process, building a reverberating relationship with the canvas, a push and pull of spontaneity and controlled intention. I use palette knife, cloth, brush, sponge and fingers, to add, remove, scratch, blur, and work the oil paint, often drawing into the paint with charcoal and pastel, whilst aiming to evoke an atmosphere drawn from the process, the emotional trigger and the colour palette employed, focusing on the relationship with the developing painting and the paint itself. It’s generally a long process of building layers, removing some and adding more until the work is pictorially and emotionally balanced.

##### What emotions or responses do you hope viewers experience when engaging with your art?

My work stems from my past and present emotional experiences, and the sea and land of my Devon, UK childhood acts as a vessel in which to convey these emotions. I don't paint to replicate a place, and my work explores the line between figuration and abstraction.

I ultimately seek to find a pictorial and emotional balance within the creation of the work, which I hope will in turn speak to the viewer’s inner self.

##### What is the mindset that helps you begin?

There are so many aspects of being an Artist that need to be attended to. Loading work onto online galleries, communicating with present and new galleries, keeping up to date inventories of your work, social media marketing, book-keeping for taxes, keeping up to date with developments in the art world, photographing finished artwork, arranging packing and delivery of sold work, and creating new work. I try to do something from the list early in the morning to keep up to date, and only then can I go to my studio for the day with a clear mind. I try to approach a new work by choosing my colour palette and making a few initial marks. This helps me get started and to not be fearful of the blank canvas.

##### How do you handle moments of doubt or insecurity about your work?

All Artists experience insecurity and self doubt at some point. When this happens to me, I stop looking at social media and immerse myself in my painting. It's akin to stepping into another world where I can hopefully channel and work through any negative feelings through the painting process.

##### How do you envision your artistic journey evolving in the coming years?

I will always create, sometimes painting and then photographing when I’m away traveling. I can’t predict how my practice will develop as it happens very gradually. My work is a journey, and as the Artist Anselm Kiefer says: “Art is longing, you never arrive but you keep going in the hope that you will.”

##### How do you approach starting a new piece of artwork? Is there a particular routine, or something that lets you know a piece is complete? Is it an instinct, a feeling, or something else?

My work comes from immersing myself in the painting process and my inner self. Tapping my subconscious leads to an untangling and unfolding of my memories of the natural world, experiences, thoughts and feelings through the paint and the developing work.

I have BBC Radio 4 playing whilst I work. I don’t necessarily listen to it but it provides a comforting background, and occasionally current news will come up that interest me, and these too subconsciously filter through into the work.

When nearing completion of a work, I may hang the painting in our living room to live with it for a while. This sometimes leads to it going back into the studio for more work, or a decision that it is complete.

It's about creating an emotional and pictorial balance within the work for it to be complete.

##### Does being part of an artistic community impact your work or connection to the Art world?

I try not to look at other Artists' work when I’m in a period of painting. I find it distracting. As visual people, I think Artists are prone to soaking up everything that is visually around them, including other Artists' work. It is inevitable, but I do try to limit it when working. Apart from that, I try to visit as many exhibitions as I can when away from my studio.


##### Have any social expectations or family influences shaped or challenged your identity as an artist?

Scape, memory, and identity are ever-present in my work. My memories, as an only child, spent diversely in beautiful wide-open spaces with my father fishing for mackerel, and at home with my mother's extreme hoarding and mental health issues, defined my fundamental need to express my feelings about these experiences through my creativity. Consequently, the quest in my work has been, and continues to be, about creating the joyful space that I was deprived of at home; but nevertheless, it is also always imbued with an inherent sense of a darker experience. When I was 17, my father died, further fuelling a need to resolve through my art practice the discords of joy, pain, love, loss, chaos and clarity: the human condition. This has left a continued longing to seek space and harmony within my work.

Other themes for my painting series include: feminism in “The Great Divide”, legacy in “Love or Money", and escapism (the Pandemic) in “Public, Private, Secret.”

##### What’s the most unconventional material or technique you’ve experimented with in your art?

I work with water-based oil paint because of an allergy to oil paint. This has allowed me to experiment with washes and staining and a building up of layers.

##### If you could change one aspect of the art world to better support artists, what would it be, and why?

I’d like to see some of the bigger British Art institutions showing more upcoming Artists, instead of the same well-known Artists. I don’t think we value Art enough in the UK, and the British Arts Council does not support independent Artists enough. I’d also like to see commercial galleries representing more female Artists.

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Gina Parr's water-based oil paintings explore memory, identity, and emotional experiences, balancing figuration and abstraction through layers.

Spotlight: Gina Parr’s Layered Landscapes of Memory and Meaning

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