The Artist says of her practice,

“Scape, memory and identity are ever present in my work. My childhood, spent diversely in wide-open spaces with my father fishing for mackerel and at home with my mother’s hoarding and mental health issues, defined my relationship to the sea and land: the spirit and memory of the open space, evoking freedom and connectedness and the dark uncertainty of the deep. My work is an expression of the intermingling of joy and pain, love and loss: the human condition and tracks the line between abstraction and figuration.
When painting, I am completely immersed in the process, building a reverberating relationship with the canvas, a push and pull of spontaneity and controlled intention. I employ palette knife, cloth, brush, sponge and fingers, to add, remove, scratch, blur and work the oil paint, often drawing into the paint with charcoal, whilst aiming to evoke an atmosphere drawn from the process, the emotional trigger and the colour palette employed. Focusing on the relationship with the developing painting and the paint itself, I ultimately seek to find an emotional balance within the creation of the work, which I hope will in turn speak to the viewer’s inner self.”

 When not in her painting studio and whilst traveling, the Artist “paints with her camera”, seeking to find painterly illusions of scape, form and fictional places within the marks, stains, colours and textures of distressed and weathered walls and other surfaces, some of which have intentionally or accidentally been laid down by others. Her intent is to photographically frame these abstract – figurative images and subsequently print them exactly as found. To date, she has produced series of photographs from: Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, Cuba, France, Spain and most recently Morocco.

 Her Limited Edition photographs are often mistaken for paintings and she has found a continuing symbiosis between her photography and painting practice.

 Originally trained as a Fine Artist, graduating with a First Class BA Honours Degree, she went on to Chelsea College of Art to study Set Design, leading to a 25-year career Production Designing a multitude of sets and stages for the likes of David Bowie, Kylie, Robbie Williams, “Shooting Stars” with Vic and Bob, the original Albert Square for “Eastenders” and Art Direction for Richard Eyres on “Insurance Man”, Alan Bennett’s Drama for BBC. She returned to her full time Art practice in 2007.

Since then she has exhibited in galleries and art fairs in the UK, Denmark, Italy and France, has completed commissions in The Middle East, Belgium, London and the USA, has had her work featured on set of numerous British Television dramas and has been selected to show at the Royal West Academy Photography Open in Bristol 2023, the ING Discerning Eye 2023 at The Mall Galleries London and the 2024 Royal Academy Summer Show.

She has recently been collaborating with Glen Scotia Whisky, part of the Loch Lomond Group Glasgow, to produce a commissioned painting for their very special release in 2025.

 Parr has also lectured in art and design in various colleges including Chelsea College of Art and Nottingham University.

Her works are held in numerous collections Worldwide including Keble College Oxford, Director of Jestico + Whiles Architects London, President of the Boston’s Children’s Museum USA, Senior Economist Goldman Sachs, Argentex and Vedanta Headquarters in London, to name but a few.

She now lives and works in both Devon and London’s East End.