Discordant Harmony in Feminine Form
Marcy Parks
Abstract Impressionism | Bristol, TN
Marcy Parks is an abstract expressionist artist living with her family in Bristol, Tennessee. Early in her life, Marcy showed a passion for the arts. After graduating with her B.A. in English Literature, Marcy would later find her way back to her visual art practice, marrying her love for painting with her love for writing.
She creates large-scale, bold and feminine abstract paintings that embody the spirit of freedom, joy, expression, and play. Her works, often beginning with words, are regularly accompanied by brief essays, short stories, and poetry, giving insight into the influences behind her visual works.
April 16, 2026
Where do you feel your story as an artist truly begins?
I have always been an artist, but I didn't find my voice as an artist until 2020. While it was a chaotic time for the world, it was deeply stabilizing for my creative expression. My employer chose to close business for a year, and with nowhere to go and a lot of big feelings, I poured myself into creating. I had the time and opportunity to explore mediums and materials, to take virtual workshops, to develop rituals around my work, and to familiarize myself with the cycle of my creative rhythm. In that time, I participated in a virtual critique group as part of the Artist Mother Network and A'driane Nieves, an incredible artist and writer, was the mentor. I remember telling her I was struggling against a desire to express the tangled mess of feelings I carried on the inside, wrestling against a history of perfectionism, and she told me "Whatever you are feeling, the canvas can take it." Those words were the catalyst of a revolution in my work that led to me embracing the feelings of chaos and embracing the "discordant harmony" that characterizes my work today.
Works on paper
What early experiences or environments shaped the way you see the world?
My childhood was incredibly chaotic, and I also work as a social worker, so I have an intimate familiarity with the painful truths humanity carries, but as an artist I am always looking for the beauty in the world and carrying in both hands the balance between heartbreak and joy, despair and hope, chaos and peace. One of the places where I commune with beauty and find the deepest sense of peace among chaos is in nature, on the trails of the place I call home in Appalachia. There is no order to the untamed landscape of the Appalachian wilderness and yet it is harmonious and reassuring. The Appalachian wilderness, in that way, heavily influences my work.
Marcy in the Appalachian wilderness
Is there a moment or chapter in your life that changed your relationship to making?
Becoming a mother absolutely changed my relationship to making. Before, my work held little meaning to me outside of what was happening or what I was creating in the moment.
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Now, I think of my work in terms of legacy,
the role it plays in shaping culture, and the example it sets for my two daughters. I will forever be challenging myself to be bolder, braver, louder, to take up more space, and to be more expressive in my art because I want my girls to feel at home in however those qualities take shape in them. Because of them, I am and will always be pushing the boundaries of what is “too much” in my work so that they will always know that there is no such thing.
She’s a Taurus
My work is always evolving in its reflection of my life through passing seasons. Before children, my work would sprawl, unfinished, over the kitchen table and would stay like that for days or weeks until I moved on. Then, my first daughter was born, so I worked at a small desk in the corner of my living room and my work was more restrained, confined to small scale pieces no bigger than 8" x 10" in size. When my first daughter was still a baby and not yet crawling, I worked in oil paints, but once she became mobile, I switched to acrylics because they dry much faster and I didn't have to worry about her getting ahold of a painting that was still drying days later. Over time, though, as my confidence in my identity as an artist/mother/Marcy/human grew, my work grew in size, and so did the space where I create it.
How would you describe your practice today, and how has it evolved over time? Why do you think that is?
Marcy working in her studio
What do you think your work is teaching you about yourself?
This is a great question and I have so many different thoughts! On the one hand, I have always perceived art in general as a mirror reflecting the viewer back to themselves, but for the artist, the process is as much the mirror as the work itself. For me, looking back at the history of my work, all I see is the story of my life, the evolution of my identity, told in a visual language. I am not sure that I could pinpoint precisely what my work is teaching me, as I believe the answer to be multi-faceted, but I would say that
How do you imagine your work evolving as your life continues to unfold?
Because of the pace of my life in this season, my process and my work embody qualities of spontaneity and impulsivity reflecting a lifestyle that requires adaptability and allows for interruption.
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Each painting is like an expletive shouted in the moment
Each painting is like a quick thought jotted down on a post-it note to revisit later, or an expletive shouted in the moment. I wonder if my work will carry the same intensity as I move into a slower season, or how that change of pace might be mirrored in my expression.
Libra Rising