On October 16, Cheryl Hazan Gallery will present the first New York solo exhibition by John Milton Ensor Parker. His recent series of paintings on aluminum panels, with graphite, enamel and automotive paints are fabricated using industrial materials and equipment. Parker a former scientist/mechanical engineer is concerned with the intersection of intuition and rationality.

In his search for a balance between Apollonian versus Dionysian forms of expression, Parker combines the logical and analytic components of physical science, penciled equations, geometric bands of color that read as spectrum analyses, with spontaneous elements that may not be defined in scientific terms. Random marks and the chance effects of poured and pooled paint, uncontrolled chemical reactions between the pigment and the metal surface act as signifiers of emotional states.

Sources of visual inspiration and influence range from the cave paintings of Lascaux to the subdued grays of Brice Marden and Jasper Johns. He might start with a statement such as “In vector mechanics a system of forces acts on a rigid body…” or with the definition of a Free Body Diagram, commonly used by scientists to show and analyze the forces exerted on an object or situation, as a departure point. The diagrams are subsequently obscured by paint or rubbed away to become a layered pictorial device. What results is an instantaneous balanced documentation of the conditions that exist at that particular moment. Parker begins with a scientific equation and ends up with a philosophical inquiry.