Venice

Essay by Erin Parish

Tom Parish, my father who died last fall, had for over thirty years a single-pointed focus on painting Venice, a subject matter that many artists dare not touch. Like fellow Americans James McNeil Whistler and John Singer Sargent, he avoided the sentimentality inherent in many depictions of the city. [...] Venice drew him in with her contradiction of being “untouched by time” and the awareness of the seeming impossibility of her continued existence. One is cognizant of the toll that the ever-increasing floods, rising water, and submersion relentlessly takes on the buildings. We witness her precarious beauty touched everywhere by nature, and feel fortunate to still be able to experience this “City in the Lagoon.”