Nurse Log and the Network
CHLOE PARSONS
San Antonio, TX
BIOGRAPHY
.jpg)
Chloe Parsons was born and raised in Maine and spent her childhood and adolescence immersed in the coastal and forested landscapes of New England. Her meandering entrance into the arts began with an undergraduate degree in English Literature where she studied linguistics, poetry, and literature. It was the poetry of Mary Oliver that drew Chloe to a deep interest in the science and poeticism of ecology, and to then express her interests artistically. In the deep isolation of 2020, she began pressing flowers and painting with her children's watercolors, and sharing her forays in nature and creative explorations online to foster connection. Since then, she has vastly expanded her skills and body of work, exhibited in multiple states, and taught painting classes for her local mycological society. She currently resides in San Antonio, TX with her family.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Watercolor is co-creative. No matter an artist’s years of mastery, the artist still works in concert with and at the behest of the water, making perfection and replication an inherent impossibility. The relationship is power-with instead of power-over. As Western society grapples with increased climate catastrophe in dissociative and hyper-individualistic ways, the field of ecology offers scientific and philosophical power-with solutions and an essential perspective shift towards interdependence and imperfect progress. Art bridges the gap between science and embodied awareness. I aim to show how humanity is a co-creative and essential member of the democracy of species, with the hope that a plural identity shared with our ecologies will embolden us to greater action in preserving ecosystems, indigenous knowledge, systems of mutuality, and sheer pleasure in the sensuality of existing. I meld multi-narrative elements from mythology, ethnobotany, mycology, theology, and psychedelia into vibrant, detailed scenes that celebrate the vitality of decay.
