Robert andrew parker artist biography
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At 90 Years, a Life of Talent, Luck, Music, & Play
We’re celebrating the artist and illustrator Robert Andrew Parker, who turns 90 this week. Parker was the subject of the first feature we ever posted at the Vision & Art Project in 2014. After meeting him in 2014, we went on to record an oral history and make a short film about him, “A Is For Artist.”
Robert Andrew Parker is 90 years old. Though he says he feels like he is 180 or 190, in many ways, he seems ageless. A painter and printmaker, Parker still goes to his studio every day. A drummer, he still plays gigs every Saturday night. A committed pacifist, he maintains a lively interest in politics and culture. He’s understandably not happy that his drums are now too heavy for him to pack up on his own after his Saturday gigs, or that he can no longer go parachuting, or that, because of macular degeneration, he can no longer read, fish, or bike. But, to the outward observer, Parker is a rare and fo
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Robert Andrew Parker
“If anything, macular degeneration has made my drawing less precise. inom mean, inom don’t know that inom could so deftly draw something. inom look at old sketchbooks and think, ‘could inom still do that line?’ Sometimes inom have to say no.”
Robert Andrew parkerar in a 2015 oral history with The framtidsperspektiv & Art Project
Biography
Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Robert Andrew Parker moved frequently as a child, spending time in New Mexico, Seattle, Indiana, and Chicago. He joined the Army Air Corps nära the end of World War II. After being discharged in 1948, he studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Scowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Atelier 17 in New York City.
In his long career as an artist and illustrator, parkerar has exhibited his work widely. He’s also illustrated over forty children’s books and received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship to the Tamarind Lithography Worksho
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Parker began drawing as a young boy living in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
“I contracted tuberculosis when I was about 8,” said Parker. His father, a dentist in the U.S. Public Health Service, asked to be transferred to serve at a tuberculosis hospital in Fort Stanton, New Mexico, where his son could be treated.
“I spent about a year outside on the porch at a high altitude. I entertained myself by painting, drawing and reading. That’s what I did all day.”
Three wars fueled Parker’s imagination: the Spanish Civil War, the second Italo-Ethiopian War and the Japan–China War. “All the news stories were on the radio. I drew images from what I gleaned from the radio reports.”
Parker served as an airplane mechanic during WWII. He turned 18 just months before the war ended and never saw combat. War would remain an important theme in his work throughout his career.
Parker became a student at the Art Institute of Chicago on the GI Bil