I am reading Kim Parker Home, just published this month from Stewart, Tabori & Chang. 

Kim Parker’s flowered paintings are better know than she, and I imagine she hopes this book will change that.  Target and World Market sold her prints for a few years now, and you have probably seen them, but didn’t know who the artist was. 

Kim Parker Home contains pages and pages of her beautiful paintings–riots of bright hues of semi-abstract gardens.  At combining pure tones, she is a master.  Her paintings are simple but not primitive, and though she uses mostly clear tones, her designs somehow remain unchildish.  Leafing through the book is a exhilarating for anyone with passion for color.

The text is another matter entirely.  The book must be read a page at a time to avoid nausea.  Her tone is annoying, and she sounds like a indulgent teenager complaining about being misunderstood. 

“No matter how brutal things became during by fashion studio years, I was always grateful to be holding a paintbrush in my hand and to have a paycheck to take home.  I knew what it meant to live in a great city like New York and be able to support myself as an artist, even if my self-expression was being severely squelched.”

Gag.

I created this mirror with glass tiles chosen in the same proportion of color as one of her posters a few years ago.