Historical information

Ian Parry (born 1947) is a Melbourne-born artist living in Tasmania, active since 1974 and collected by National and State Collections.
He was winner of the 1990 ACTA Maritime art Prize. He also took part in 2006, to the ANL Art Prize organised each year at the Mission since 2003.

In his biography on his website: 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.

"In the early 70's when I first showed at the renowned Powell St gallery in Melbourne, 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."

Physical description

Large moulded gilt wood frame, non glazed painting of shipping, oil on canvas

Inscriptions & markings

Signature and date bottom right corner: "Parry 89"