Leslie Parke

Artist’s Statement

I used to think of my paintings as objects — compositions, surfaces, gestures. But then something happened that redefined not only what I create, but why I create it.

During a jazz concert by Nick Hetko, I experienced tunnel vision. The room faded. Only the band remained, suspended in clarity. Then, without warning, the entire scene exploded into color, not paint or light, but pixelated fragments, like floating confetti. The band dissolved. The audience dissolved. And then, so did I. There was no fear—only a profound sense of well-being, of weightlessness. I felt myself reabsorbed into something vast and luminous.

That moment altered my understanding of perception and presence. It also gave shape to a question that now guides my work: how can painting evoke a shift in consciousness?

Our experience of the world is mediated through the senses. When those senses shift, whether through music, trauma, meditation, or vision, reality reconfigures. The Buddhists speak of acintya, the realm of no-thought, where opposites dissolve into unity and a feeling of boundless love and belonging emerges. In physics, there's a similar collapse, a unification of matter and force. This, too, is reality.

Since that experience, I’ve been trying to build visual fields that don’t describe this dissolution but enact it. I no longer think of my work as representational or even abstract. It is vibrational. Experiential. The paintings function as portals, not into another world, but into a state of expanded presence. They’re meant to be felt, not just seen. They invite you to step out of narrative and into frequency.

If, while standing in front of one, you feel unsettled, lifted, absorbed, or undone — that’s the point. You’re not looking at the painting. You’re inside it.