Image: Courtesy the artist and gallery.

Ian Parry was born into a family of seafaring descent. His extensive career as a respected practising artist and teacher, has uniquely included a fishing fleet apprenticeship and years as a single handed fisherman in Bass Strait.

He says: “In the early 70’s the paintings were large, abstract, with allusion to the experience of the world of water, sky and land. My visual world has always been permeated with the wet parts of this place and continues to be so to this day. Maritime and geological charts and the daily necessity of plotting a course, appear in paintings where necessary, as a means of getting a schematic representation of the subject into play, trying to free the work from the tyranny of the horizon line but frequently returning. Now-a-days I am returning to abstraction, making paintings that allow me free rein with colour and composition, aiming for a sense of permanence and independence in each work.”