Lora Schlesinger’s East Gallery features Picturing When, Beth Parker’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Beth’s paintings analyze the presence that television and film have in Los Angeles and in her life. In her small devotional paintings, references to television and film reflect the intimacy and the emotional connections we share as a collective audience when watching these fictional narratives. Beth carefully selects stills, and renders them meticulously with oil paint, a medium that has been used to immortalize icons and narratives for centuries. Though the light of a flickering screen transmits the majority of information today, narratives were once conveyed through painting and stained glass windows, preserving and elevating their subjects. Beth’s paintings combine billboards, stills and Los Angeles street scenes portrayed in a stained glass style. Exploring the physicality of oil paint, she methodically applies transparent layers of pigment, creating intimate paintings that examine the roles that television and film play in our lives.

Beth Parker received her MFA at Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Art, Indiana University and her BFA at Maryland Institute College of Art. She was the recipient of Indiana University’s College of Arts and Sciences Fellowship, Mary Jane McIntire Fellowship and Friends of Art Fellowship in 2011. She lives and works in Los Angeles.