A visionary artist inspired by underground comics, graffiti, hip-hop, dub, and conspiracy theories, as well as the art of Picasso, Bacon, and Basquiat, Erik Parker makes fantastic paintings and drawings of biomorphic maps, twisted heads, humorous hieroglyphics, surreal still lives, and bizarre landscapes that exquisitely exploit both psychological and psychedelic realms. The subject of a recent solo show at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, a current survey at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and a new monograph, published by Skira Rizzoli, Parker reminisces about growing up in Texas, his early days in New York, and the origins of his energetic work with FLATT contributing writer Paul Laster.

PAUL LASTER: Where did you grow up?

ERIK PARKER: I grew up in Texas—back and forth between San Antonio and Austin.

PAUL LASTER: Where did you go to school?

ERIK PARKER: I was an undergraduate student at the University of Texas in Austin from 1992 to 1996 and got an MFA from Purchase College, which is just north of New York City, in 1998. I started out at a community college, because I had a GED.

PAUL LASTER: What was it like growing up in Texas?

ERIK PARKER: Not the best for me. I didn’t get along with the cowboy culture, which meant that I hung out with the black kids and the heads and freaks and Mexicans.

PAUL LASTER: You’re a small guy, so you probably weren’t a jock.

ERIK PARKER: No, but I tried. I did OK. I was good at track. The attitude there was very the stereotypical, southern Texan, Baptist belt situation—and I found myself fighting it.

PAUL LASTER: Were you rebellious?

ERIK PARKER: Oh, sure.

PAUL LASTER: Did you get in trouble? Is that why you got a GED, instead of finishing high school?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah.

PAUL LASTER: What drew you into art?

ERIK PARKER: Mad magazine, and from there it was community college. I saw these dudes making lowrider paintings and started taking art courses. It was a great place to be. I was getting money on a Pell Grant to go. I stayed for four years.

PAUL LASTER: Were you working a job while you were going there?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, odd jobs—changing oil and other things.

PAUL LASTER: When did you start to get serious about art?

ERIK PARKER: Immediately.

PAUL LASTER: Who were your influences at the time?

ERIK PARKER: The proper ones: Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Pop artists. It wasn’t until I went to school in Austin and studied with Peter Saul that I found out about the Chicago Imagists and the whole way of doing things in the wrong way, kind of oddball looking.

PAUL LASTER: So being rebellious, were you immediately attracted to Saul’s sensibility?

ERIK PARKER: Sure, that appealed to me—getting paid to be rebellious.

PAUL LASTER: Was Basquiat an influence?

ERIK PARKER: He was a huge influence—it kind of rolls in and out—along with Haring and Scharf.

PAUL LASTER: When did you move to New York and what was your first impression of the city?

ERIK PARKER: I moved here in 1996 and it was a big change. I lived in the Bronx. I had a head of dreadlocks that had to go immediately.

PAUL LASTER: Because you were out of date?

ERIK PARKER: No, because there were real Rastas there, and they were like what dude? No, that’s not going to roll above 125th Street. But it was exciting.

PAUL LASTER: Why the Bronx?

ERIK PARKER: It was cheap, really cheap.

PAUL LASTER: What was your first big break?

ERIK PARKER: There was kind of a cluster of them. I was in a group show at White Columns, which led to a wall painting at Gavin Brown’s with Rirkrit Tiravanija.

PAUL LASTER: Didn’t you do the wall painting in a renegade way?

ERIK PARKER: No, I was asked to do it and got a lifetime bar pass at Passerby [the bar that was at the front of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in Chelsea] and that led to Greater New York at PS1, which was the more public breakout. I had good placement in the first Greater New York.

PAUL LASTER: That was in 2000. What were you doing before that?

ERIK PARKER: Working in galleries, mainly at Luhring Augustine and a bit for David Zwirner, when he was in SoHo—schlepping, moving Franz West furniture.

PAUL LASTER: Is that how you hooked up Leo Koenig, who represented you for several years?

ERIK PARKER: I met Leo when I was installing a summer group show at Luhring Augustine and Leo was repping one of the artists in the show, Dara Birnbaum.

PAUL LASTER: So your first big break was great visibility in Greater New York. Didn’t Michael and Susan Hort lend your painting that was in the lobby?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, the Horts gave me a grant [Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award] in 1999. There was the grant, group show, Gavin’s, and Greater New York. That allowed me to get some money to stop working as much, even though I still worked a bit at the galleries. After the grant, Michael and Susan Hort came by the studio and bought the piece that they lent to PS1.

PAUL LASTER: What kind of works were you doing at that time?

ERIK PARKER: I was making text-based works that were about picking a theme or not having a theme at all, creating a place to write these clusters of words, usually spewing out of comic-booky, anus structures with free association writing—ego graffiti.

PAUL LASTER: I remember the big cut-paper pieces that you showed at Leo Koenig on Broadway that had turd-shaped elements.

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, turdy-finger-like-forms.

PAUL LASTER: How did you start showing with Leo? Was it when he took over the Four Walls space in Williamsburg?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, I would go by there and hang out. Then he saw the work and asked me to do a show. It happened very quickly. I always needed money. I was very eager. I had to care for a child and I just went for it. Knowing where Leo was coming from, with his education, and his knowledge of contemporary art, and the art world connections by way of his father [European curator Kaspar Koenig] and his family [the art book publisher Walter Koenig and Berlin art dealer Johan Koenig.] It seemed like a smart move.

PAUL LASTER: Was your first show, Whiteboysteals, with Leo Koenig on Broadway in 2000?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, it was my first solo show. There was big buzz about that spot.

PAUL LASTER: You and I initially met at Tony Shafrazi Gallery. You came to view a Michael Ray Charles exhibition when I was working there in the late-‘90s. The next time that I saw you was when I first met Leo and Josh Smith. It was during Leo’s first exhibition at the Williamsburg space in 1999, Aidas Bareikas’ show, which I covered for Artnet.

ERIK PARKER: Josh and I worked together at Luhring Augustine, and then he worked for Christopher Wool for some time, and we have remained friends ever since.

PAUL LASTER: I didn’t realize that—now that’s where he shows. And CANADA was downstairs from Leo’s Broadway space. I remember Josh had an early show with them. Did they get their space at the same time as Leo?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, and Leo would block off their door during openings so it would be harder to get down there. He liked to screw with them.

PAUL LASTER: Wasn’t everyone renting space from the Dot-Com maniac Josh Harris?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, he was the first guy that I ever saw talk endlessly on a cell phone. Before there were ever plans with unlimited minutes, he was just on it for hours.

PAUL LASTER: Back when we had beepers.

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, he had a Motorola StarTAC, and we were like, ‘Dude, what is that thing?’ Even if he wasn’t on the phone he was just holding it. It was nuts. His bill must have been $5,000 a month.

PAUL LASTER: He was nuts. I used to go to his crazy parties at Pseudo in SoHo. They were wild!

ERIK PARKER: He was hemorrhaging money on purpose. It was out of control.

PAUL LASTER: That was life back then, what’s your life like now?

ERIK PARKER: It’s mainly family, painting, listening to music, and viewing things online. I’m in the studio twice a day, nearly every day. I go through phases of looking at art catalogues and things online to nothing, but right now I’m back on, looking at Carroll Dunham’s work. It’s fierce! I love his ‘90s stuff with the foam balls on it. His drawings are fantastic; his prints are great; and I’m heavy on the paintings.

PAUL LASTER: Do you buy a lot of books for research?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah.

A visionary artist inspired by underground comics, graffiti, hip-hop, dub, and conspiracy theories, as well as the art of Picasso, Bacon, and Basquiat, Erik Parker makes fantastic paintings and drawings of biomorphic maps, twisted heads, humorous hieroglyphics, surreal still lives, and bizarre landscapes that exquisitely exploit both psychological and psychedelic realms. The subject of a recent solo show at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, a current survey at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and a new monograph, published by Skira Rizzoli, Parker reminisces about growing up in Texas, his early days in New York, and the origins of his energetic work with FLATT contributing writer Paul Laster.

PAUL LASTER: Where did you grow up?

ERIK PARKER: I grew up in Texas—back and forth between San Antonio and Austin.

PAUL LASTER: Where did you go to school?

ERIK PARKER: I was an undergraduate student at the University of Texas in Austin from 1992 to 1996 and got an MFA from Purchase College, which is just north of New York City, in 1998. I started out at a community college, because I had a GED.

PAUL LASTER: What was it like growing up in Texas?

ERIK PARKER: Not the best for me. I didn’t get along with the cowboy culture, which meant that I hung out with the black kids and the heads and freaks and Mexicans.

PAUL LASTER: You’re a small guy, so you probably weren’t a jock.

ERIK PARKER: No, but I tried. I did OK. I was good at track. The attitude there was very the stereotypical, southern Texan, Baptist belt situation—and I found myself fighting it.

PAUL LASTER: Were you rebellious?

ERIK PARKER: Oh, sure.

PAUL LASTER: Did you get in trouble? Is that why you got a GED, instead of finishing high school?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah.

PAUL LASTER: What drew you into art?

ERIK PARKER: Mad magazine, and from there it was community college. I saw these dudes making lowrider paintings and started taking art courses. It was a great place to be. I was getting money on a Pell Grant to go. I stayed for four years.

PAUL LASTER: Were you working a job while you were going there?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, odd jobs—changing oil and other things.

PAUL LASTER: When did you start to get serious about art?

ERIK PARKER: Immediately.

PAUL LASTER: Who were your influences at the time?

ERIK PARKER: The proper ones: Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Pop artists. It wasn’t until I went to school in Austin and studied with Peter Saul that I found out about the Chicago Imagists and the whole way of doing things in the wrong way, kind of oddball looking.

PAUL LASTER: So being rebellious, were you immediately attracted to Saul’s sensibility?

ERIK PARKER: Sure, that appealed to me—getting paid to be rebellious.

PAUL LASTER: Was Basquiat an influence?

ERIK PARKER: He was a huge influence—it kind of rolls in and out—along with Haring and Scharf.

PAUL LASTER: When did you move to New York and what was your first impression of the city?

ERIK PARKER: I moved here in 1996 and it was a big change. I lived in the Bronx. I had a head of dreadlocks that had to go immediately.

PAUL LASTER: Because you were out of date?

ERIK PARKER: No, because there were real Rastas there, and they were like what dude? No, that’s not going to roll above 125th Street. But it was exciting.

PAUL LASTER: Why the Bronx?

ERIK PARKER: It was cheap, really cheap.

PAUL LASTER: What was your first big break?

ERIK PARKER: There was kind of a cluster of them. I was in a group show at White Columns, which led to a wall painting at Gavin Brown’s with Rirkrit Tiravanija.

PAUL LASTER: Didn’t you do the wall painting in a renegade way?

ERIK PARKER: No, I was asked to do it and got a lifetime bar pass at Passerby [the bar that was at the front of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in Chelsea] and that led to Greater New York at PS1, which was the more public breakout. I had good placement in the first Greater New York.

PAUL LASTER: That was in 2000. What were you doing before that?

ERIK PARKER: Working in galleries, mainly at Luhring Augustine and a bit for David Zwirner, when he was in SoHo—schlepping, moving Franz West furniture.

PAUL LASTER: Is that how you hooked up Leo Koenig, who represented you for several years?

ERIK PARKER: I met Leo when I was installing a summer group show at Luhring Augustine and Leo was repping one of the artists in the show, Dara Birnbaum.

PAUL LASTER: So your first big break was great visibility in Greater New York. Didn’t Michael and Susan Hort lend your painting that was in the lobby?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, the Horts gave me a grant [Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award] in 1999. There was the grant, group show, Gavin’s, and Greater New York. That allowed me to get some money to stop working as much, even though I still worked a bit at the galleries. After the grant, Michael and Susan Hort came by the studio and bought the piece that they lent to PS1.

PAUL LASTER: What kind of works were you doing at that time?

ERIK PARKER: I was making text-based works that were about picking a theme or not having a theme at all, creating a place to write these clusters of words, usually spewing out of comic-booky, anus structures with free association writing—ego graffiti.

PAUL LASTER: I remember the big cut-paper pieces that you showed at Leo Koenig on Broadway that had turd-shaped elements.

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, turdy-finger-like-forms.

PAUL LASTER: How did you start showing with Leo? Was it when he took over the Four Walls space in Williamsburg?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, I would go by there and hang out. Then he saw the work and asked me to do a show. It happened very quickly. I always needed money. I was very eager. I had to care for a child and I just went for it. Knowing where Leo was coming from, with his education, and his knowledge of contemporary art, and the art world connections by way of his father [European curator Kaspar Koenig] and his family [the art book publisher Walter Koenig and Berlin art dealer Johan Koenig.] It seemed like a smart move.

PAUL LASTER: Was your first show, Whiteboysteals, with Leo Koenig on Broadway in 2000?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, it was my first solo show. There was big buzz about that spot.

PAUL LASTER: You and I initially met at Tony Shafrazi Gallery. You came to view a Michael Ray Charles exhibition when I was working there in the late-‘90s. The next time that I saw you was when I first met Leo and Josh Smith. It was during Leo’s first exhibition at the Williamsburg space in 1999, Aidas Bareikas’ show, which I covered for Artnet.

ERIK PARKER: Josh and I worked together at Luhring Augustine, and then he worked for Christopher Wool for some time, and we have remained friends ever since.

PAUL LASTER: I didn’t realize that—now that’s where he shows. And CANADA was downstairs from Leo’s Broadway space. I remember Josh had an early show with them. Did they get their space at the same time as Leo?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, and Leo would block off their door during openings so it would be harder to get down there. He liked to screw with them.

PAUL LASTER: Wasn’t everyone renting space from the Dot-Com maniac Josh Harris?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, he was the first guy that I ever saw talk endlessly on a cell phone. Before there were ever plans with unlimited minutes, he was just on it for hours.

PAUL LASTER: Back when we had beepers.

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, he had a Motorola StarTAC, and we were like, ‘Dude, what is that thing?’ Even if he wasn’t on the phone he was just holding it. It was nuts. His bill must have been $5,000 a month.

PAUL LASTER: He was nuts. I used to go to his crazy parties at Pseudo in SoHo. They were wild!

ERIK PARKER: He was hemorrhaging money on purpose. It was out of control.

PAUL LASTER: That was life back then, what’s your life like now?

ERIK PARKER: It’s mainly family, painting, listening to music, and viewing things online. I’m in the studio twice a day, nearly every day. I go through phases of looking at art catalogues and things online to nothing, but right now I’m back on, looking at Carroll Dunham’s work. It’s fierce! I love his ‘90s stuff with the foam balls on it. His drawings are fantastic; his prints are great; and I’m heavy on the paintings.

PAUL LASTER: Do you buy a lot of books for research?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah.

PAUL LASTER: I was just at Jose Parla’s studio and I had Gagosian’s Picasso and Francoise Gilot monograph with me and he had worked with a ceramicist who had worked with Picasso during that period and he said, “Oh man, I’ve got to get that book.” Speaking of Jose, who are your artist friends?

ERIK PARKER: Well, Jose is a friend, and Josh Smith, Eddie Martinez, KAWS [Brian Donnelly], Rossan Crow, Dana Schutz, Jules de Balincourt…those are the people I talk to.

PAUL LASTER: And Kenny Scharf?

ERIK PARKER: Kenny, when I see him. He’s been in LA a lot this year.

PAUL LASTER: And Peter Saul?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, Peter, but Brian and I talk the most, and Eddie, too. They both have studios nearby.

PAUL LASTER: What artists have influenced you the most? We may have already touched on it, but let’s review it again.

ERIK PARKER: I have a long list. The first major influence guy was probably Basquiat—Rauschenberg and Basquiat. Once I hit Basquiat I kind of snowballed into “oh you can do this and you can do that.” It resonated more with my age. It had the hip-hop sensibility, and at that time there wasn’t the crossover yet. Hip-hop was like whoa! Even when I got to UT they were like why is this white guy listening to hip-hop? You had to like David Salle. So I would say Basquiat, Rauschenberg, and Haring were cool and the school had a big library, where I got into Ed Paschke, Peter, Jim Nutt, and David Hammons. I look at David Hammons and get it right away—it’s very powerful.

PAUL LASTER: Karl Wirsum?

ERIK PARKER: You couldn’t find much on his work until more recently. It was even hard to find images, the same with Tip [Carroll] Dunham.

PAUL LASTER: What kind of research did you do on the text paintings, in order to load them with information?

ERIK PARKER: I found out that if I bought books and used them for paintings, I could write them off from my taxes. I bought books that interested me. Amazon was just starting up so I would order books online and I’d buy as many art magazines as I could on the stands.

PAUL LASTER: Take for example the big painting [The Way We Was, 2000] about the downtown art scene in the ‘80s that’s at the Aldrich Museum right now, where did you get the source information for it?

ERIK PARKER: I got a lot of source material for that painting from Jerry Saltz. Jerry lent me his old copies of Arts Magazine.

PAUL LASTER: That was a great magazine. Barry Schwabsky was the editor and Jerry used to have a monthly column on new artists. When you made a painting with political content, how did you source it? Were you on the computer at that point?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, we had a dial-up connection and a computer, but it wasn’t like it is now. I got the list of all of the people that George W. Bush had executed during his tenure as governor of Texas from the Internet and I bought political books from the bookstore. I would go to the store with a subject in mind and buy as many related books as possible. It was a great way to work.

PAUL LASTER: How would you describe your process of taking something and filtering it?

ERIK PARKER: It’s setting a challenge for myself. I looked at all of the heads and said how do I do something that could possibly be pretty. I have a tough time making a painting that’s not intense. So flowers might be good because everyone likes flowers, right? The idea was to talk about beauty instead of tearing apart the human form. It’s still going to be paranoid because I’m kind of a paranoid guy; it’s going to be intense because that’s just the way it is; and it could also be beautiful. That’s why I chose the still life. It’s something recognizable that the viewer can enter right away.

PAUL LASTER: Do you start with a drawing?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, it might begin with a random photo off of the Internet and then I make a copy and put it on a light box and make it mine.

PAUL LASTER: Do you use computers in the making of the work?

ERIK PARKER: Only to find images.

PAUL LASTER: Would you consider your work more analog than digital?

ERIK PARKER: It’s definitely more analog.

PAUL LASTER: How would you define your art—from the text paintings, the heads, the still lives, the hieroglyphic drawings, and the new jungle paintings?

ERIK PARKER: You could call it formalism. It’s about being active, keeping the brain active, and just keeping on making stuff. I don’t like to use the word practice—it makes me nervous—or artwork, it’s more art labor. I like to just keep busy.

PAUL LASTER: Do you feel a sense of play with what you do?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, I’m addicted to it. I’m very fortunate that I can do this all day.

PAUL LASTER: How do you plan what you are going to show in a solo exhibition?

ERIK PARKER: When Paul [Kasmin] and I had a discussion about a new show he said the jungles might be quite good. At that time I had only made two, but I thought let’s run with it. At this point I’m not thinking of closing anything out, but adding to it. This or that piece might become part of a series.

PAUL LASTER: What do you do when you’re done with a show?

ERIK PARKER: Hopefully just roll with it. When these painting leave, eight more canvases arrive. I’m not a big vacation guy. I might take a weekend off and go somewhere, but I belong in the studio.

PAUL LASTER: What are the sources that fed the new landscape paintings?

ERIK PARKER: On a conceptual level Lee “Scratch” Perry’s music. On a visual level Matisse and Rousseau.

PAUL LASTER: Henri Rousseau? How long has he been an inspiration?

ERIK PARKER: A long time, on and off, he’s one of those guys that you have to close the book, and then look at it again.

PAUL LASTER: What about Matisse? How long have you been into his work?

ERIK PARKER: Not so long. I thought he was light for many years and then it just hit me. He’s kind of a new thing for me over the past two years.

PAUL LASTER: How important is music to your work?

ERIK PARKER: It’s extremely important! It’s kind of a backbone and I think of things in terms of a song structure or an album—the paintings for a show could each be a song and the show an album. When they leave the studio, we have the record, the album. It’s an easier way for me to process things—the breakdown between this song, this song, and this song and how things operate between songs. Music is on all of the time in the studio.

PAUL LASTER: Looking back over your body of work, do you see an evolution of music or are you still listening to some of the same songs that you were playing in the beginning?

ERIK PARKER: Some things come in and out, like this show was a lot of dub and reggae, and I used to listen to a lot of the same music in the ‘90s. We’re deep in dub!

PAUL LASTER: What kind of worlds are you trying to create on canvas?

ERIK PARKER: They could be bad or they could be good; it’s undetermined. I want them to be otherworldly, sort of sci-fi, conspiracy, paranoid, intense—have to be intense—realms.

PAUL LASTER: Where do they begin, these worlds?

ERIK PARKER: Here, kind of, and from other sources, and then in here, and out there. They begin here, somewhat, and they end up here.

PAUL LASTER: What’s the greatest challenge of being an artist?

ERIK PARKER: Keeping it going. Pushing it. Reinventing your self. Not being stagnant. None of the other stuff, like trends, is important. It’s about pushing your vision

I was just at Jose Parla’s studio and I had Gagosian’s Picasso and Francoise Gilot monograph with me and he had worked with a ceramicist who had worked with Picasso during that period and he said, “Oh man, I’ve got to get that book.” Speaking of Jose, who are your artist friends?

ERIK PARKER: Well, Jose is a friend, and Josh Smith, Eddie Martinez, KAWS [Brian Donnelly], Rossan Crow, Dana Schutz, Jules de Balincourt…those are the people I talk to.

PAUL LASTER: And Kenny Scharf?

ERIK PARKER: Kenny, when I see him. He’s been in LA a lot this year.

PAUL LASTER: And Peter Saul?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, Peter, but Brian and I talk the most, and Eddie, too. They both have studios nearby.

PAUL LASTER: What artists have influenced you the most? We may have already touched on it, but let’s review it again.

ERIK PARKER: I have a long list. The first major influence guy was probably Basquiat—Rauschenberg and Basquiat. Once I hit Basquiat I kind of snowballed into “oh you can do this and you can do that.” It resonated more with my age. It had the hip-hop sensibility, and at that time there wasn’t the crossover yet. Hip-hop was like whoa! Even when I got to UT they were like why is this white guy listening to hip-hop? You had to like David Salle. So I would say Basquiat, Rauschenberg, and Haring were cool and the school had a big library, where I got into Ed Paschke, Peter, Jim Nutt, and David Hammons. I look at David Hammons and get it right away—it’s very powerful.

PAUL LASTER: Karl Wirsum?

ERIK PARKER: You couldn’t find much on his work until more recently. It was even hard to find images, the same with Tip [Carroll] Dunham.

PAUL LASTER: What kind of research did you do on the text paintings, in order to load them with information?

ERIK PARKER: I found out that if I bought books and used them for paintings, I could write them off from my taxes. I bought books that interested me. Amazon was just starting up so I would order books online and I’d buy as many art magazines as I could on the stands.

PAUL LASTER: Take for example the big painting [The Way We Was, 2000] about the downtown art scene in the ‘80s that’s at the Aldrich Museum right now, where did you get the source information for it?

ERIK PARKER: I got a lot of source material for that painting from Jerry Saltz. Jerry lent me his old copies of Arts Magazine.

PAUL LASTER: That was a great magazine. Barry Schwabsky was the editor and Jerry used to have a monthly column on new artists. When you made a painting with political content, how did you source it? Were you on the computer at that point?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, we had a dial-up connection and a computer, but it wasn’t like it is now. I got the list of all of the people that George W. Bush had executed during his tenure as governor of Texas from the Internet and I bought political books from the bookstore. I would go to the store with a subject in mind and buy as many related books as possible. It was a great way to work.

PAUL LASTER: How would you describe your process of taking something and filtering it?

ERIK PARKER: It’s setting a challenge for myself. I looked at all of the heads and said how do I do something that could possibly be pretty. I have a tough time making a painting that’s not intense. So flowers might be good because everyone likes flowers, right? The idea was to talk about beauty instead of tearing apart the human form. It’s still going to be paranoid because I’m kind of a paranoid guy; it’s going to be intense because that’s just the way it is; and it could also be beautiful. That’s why I chose the still life. It’s something recognizable that the viewer can enter right away.

PAUL LASTER: Do you start with a drawing?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, it might begin with a random photo off of the Internet and then I make a copy and put it on a light box and make it mine.

PAUL LASTER: Do you use computers in the making of the work?

ERIK PARKER: Only to find images.

PAUL LASTER: Would you consider your work more analog than digital?

ERIK PARKER: It’s definitely more analog.

PAUL LASTER: How would you define your art—from the text paintings, the heads, the still lives, the hieroglyphic drawings, and the new jungle paintings?

ERIK PARKER: You could call it formalism. It’s about being active, keeping the brain active, and just keeping on making stuff. I don’t like to use the word practice—it makes me nervous—or artwork, it’s more art labor. I like to just keep busy.

PAUL LASTER: Do you feel a sense of play with what you do?

ERIK PARKER: Yeah, I’m addicted to it. I’m very fortunate that I can do this all day.

PAUL LASTER: How do you plan what you are going to show in a solo exhibition?

ERIK PARKER: When Paul [Kasmin] and I had a discussion about a new show he said the jungles might be quite good. At that time I had only made two, but I thought let’s run with it. At this point I’m not thinking of closing anything out, but adding to it. This or that piece might become part of a series.

PAUL LASTER: What do you do when you’re done with a show?

ERIK PARKER: Hopefully just roll with it. When these painting leave, eight more canvases arrive. I’m not a big vacation guy. I might take a weekend off and go somewhere, but I belong in the studio.

PAUL LASTER: What are the sources that fed the new landscape paintings?

ERIK PARKER: On a conceptual level Lee “Scratch” Perry’s music. On a visual level Matisse and Rousseau.

PAUL LASTER: Henri Rousseau? How long has he been an inspiration?

ERIK PARKER: A long time, on and off, he’s one of those guys that you have to close the book, and then look at it again.

PAUL LASTER: What about Matisse? How long have you been into his work?

ERIK PARKER: Not so long. I thought he was light for many years and then it just hit me. He’s kind of a new thing for me over the past two years.

PAUL LASTER: How important is music to your work?

ERIK PARKER: It’s extremely important! It’s kind of a backbone and I think of things in terms of a song structure or an album—the paintings for a show could each be a song and the show an album. When they leave the studio, we have the record, the album. It’s an easier way for me to process things—the breakdown between this song, this song, and this song and how things operate between songs. Music is on all of the time in the studio.

PAUL LASTER: Looking back over your body of work, do you see an evolution of music or are you still listening to some of the same songs that you were playing in the beginning?

ERIK PARKER: Some things come in and out, like this show was a lot of dub and reggae, and I used to listen to a lot of the same music in the ‘90s. We’re deep in dub!

PAUL LASTER: What kind of worlds are you trying to create on canvas?

ERIK PARKER: They could be bad or they could be good; it’s undetermined. I want them to be otherworldly, sort of sci-fi, conspiracy, paranoid, intense—have to be intense—realms.

PAUL LASTER: Where do they begin, these worlds?

ERIK PARKER: Here, kind of, and from other sources, and then in here, and out there. They begin here, somewhat, and they end up here.

PAUL LASTER: What’s the greatest challenge of being an artist?

ERIK PARKER: Keeping it going. Pushing it. Reinventing your self. Not being stagnant. None of the other stuff, like trends, is important. It’s about pushing your vision.