We caught up with Gina Parr to explore the inspirations and intentions behind her latest work and her creative journey. Describing her art as a “pot pourri of experiences,” she crafts pieces that seem to simultaneously expand and contract—a process of releasing darkness while making space for joy. Through her work, she navigates the complexities of a traumatic childhood, transforming emotion into visual expression.
By Sophie Heatley | 10 Apr 2025
Anselm Kiefer once said, “Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.” For Gina Parr, that is both a challenge and a calling. In her pursuit to render the unspoken, to explore the tension between what is seen and what is felt, her paintings become not literal representations of place or time, but rather instinctive portrayals of internal landscapes. With their rich textures and emotional depth, they hold the resonance of experiences without defining or justifying them: fragments of memory, echoes of grief, and the physical density of longing.
Parr’s artistic journey is one shaped as much by life as by practice. A former set
designer for BBC television, she spent 25 years working to briefs; creating immersive, fictional environments for others to perform in. Now, she paints another kind of space—one uniquely her own, far from fiction, yet always one step shy of the truth. “It’s a quest, in effect, to design the space that I was denied as a child,” she says.
Parr speaks candidly about how her early life continues to shape her work. The death of her father when she was 17, and her mother’s hoarding disorder, remain central forces. She recalls the calm of fishing with her father interwoven with a sense of unease—brief, peaceful escapes from the turmoil at home. That same tension runs through her work: a thoughtful balance between peace and turbulence.
Upon observation, I have the unusual sensation that Parr’s work is expanding and contracting at the same time; the swell and suction of ocean on coast; the ominous pause between lightning strike and thunderclap. There’s this feeling that something has happened, is happening, and is yet to come—a powerful evocation of trauma’s circular, ever-present nature. It is important to note here that, in 2004, Parr ran from the Boxing Day Tsunami with her family. They all survived.
Her work loops through memory, always close yet never fully within reach. This experience of rupture—of life split into before and after—has profoundly shaped her understanding of space, both physical and emotional. These paintings suggest that absence is not a void, but charged: a presence in its own right, echoing what was, or what might have been.
In this way, her work becomes a cathartic mapping of emotional topographies—a wandering through internal landscapes to understand, to resolve, to find reason in the foggy aftermath of pain and heartache. There’s a distinct duality at play. Parr often speaks of balancing excess with restraint, of paintings that oscillate between “clutter and clear.” It is within this constant flux that she finds meaning, pushing beyond comfort to reach something raw and truthful.
Although Parr draws much inspiration from the natural world, there’s a habitual mark-making that is less from external observation and more from gazing within. “There’s a need and a comfort in repeating images, to make patterns.” Perhaps reflective of the human impulse to revisit old wounds and longings as a way to understand or, in many cases, to hold onto something we’re not quite ready to let go of. “I’ll never find a solution to that childhood trauma but I’m driven everyday to creatively pursue it.”
Photography is a natural extension of Parr’s painting. When travelling or away from the canvas, the camera becomes her brush. “I’m always looking at walls, sides of boats and other interesting surfaces… just stuff in the urban sprawl. I’m searching for paintings on those surfaces. The connection is that I’m looking for a chimerical space that already exists – whether created by weather, by humans, by graffiti, or some serendipitous weatheration.”
These photographs are not merely studies; they are cousins of her paintings – born from the same impulse to find meaning in surface, memory in matter. There is an element of chance in each frame, of having stumbled upon something quietly sacred. The artist relishes this unpredictability – both in photographing what the universe happens to place in her path, and in those moments during painting when something unexpected emerges unbidden.
“I often think about Picasso and that quote about spending our entire lives trying to paint like the children we once were – uninhibited.” Though her work draws on past experiences, Parr still longs to “get back to the freshness, the wonderful gut reaction to creating something.” That instinctive response brings a lightness and relief to her practice – it’s not all darkness and discomfort. “I actually have a joyous relationship with the canvas. Everything I’m thinking, feeling – all my movements – go into that canvas. I’m so in that space, so immersed in the process. And there are flashes, as I’m working through it, where I get the feeling that it’s going to be okay.”
Each of her pieces is a journey, a wrestling match between the perfectionist’s instinct to tidy and the artist’s need to leave marks raw, exposed. The result is work that feels alive: layered, searching, and suspended between resolution and unrest. “Painting is a battle between controlled intention and spontaneity,” she reflects. “I guess I’m looking towards the end of each painting, for it to feel right—pictorially and emotionally.”
The Portuguese word saudade—that ineffable ache for something lost—comes to mind when Parr describes the heart of her practice. Her paintings are not limited to grief or trauma, but they are informed by them, shadowed by longing and illuminated by moments of relief. “It’s a balance between longing and love,” she says. Her work speaks not of resolution but of movement: inching forward, circling back, daring always to be brave.