FREQUENCIES: Painting the Invisible
"Clouds on Water", 60 inches x 96 inches, oil on canvas, © 2022 Leslie Parke
When viewers walk into my new exhibition, FREQUENCIES, I want them to feel as if they’ve stepped inside light itself—where color doesn’t sit politely on a surface but vibrates through the body like sound through a tuning fork. These paintings grew out of two earlier bodies of work, Unified Field and Lightness of Being, yet they push even further into that liminal territory where surface, light, and matter dissolve into one radiant continuum.
I’ve always been restless around the old binaries—realism versus abstraction, figure versus ground. In Unified Field I began treating fractured bits of packaging, metallic reflections, and iridescent plastics as raw material for building spaces that feel both constructed and organic. The result is an optical kaleidoscope: shards of the visible world rearranged into a single humming field. Those early experiments taught me that color isn’t static; it’s an active force, a fluctuating frequency you can almost breathe.
With Lightness of Being I shifted the palette upward—toward opalescent whites, sky blues, and the pearly echoes you catch in the corner of your eye just before sunrise. Instead of wrestling chaos into order, I started courting grace. The brushwork became softer, the edges blurred, and what emerged was a kind of atmospheric calm that reminds some viewers of Agnes Martin, though I’m less interested in stillness and more in that moment when clarity tips into surrender.
What FREQUENCIES adds to the conversation
"Luminous River," 40 inches x 30 inches, oil paint and acrylic markers on canvas, © 2025 Leslie Parke
For this exhibition I wanted each canvas to act like a transmitter. Stand long enough in front of Luminous River and you’ll notice your breath deepen. Step closer to Echo Upon Echo—a surge of vermilion threaded with metallic orange—and you might feel heat spreading across your chest. I’m not claiming medical miracles; I’m just pointing out what happens when the eye and nervous system interact with very specific wavelengths of light.
Scientific studies show that long-wave reds can stimulate mitochondrial activity, while shorter blues nudge the body toward calm. I read those papers, but in the studio I trust my own nervous system first: if a passage of color makes me lean forward physically, I know I’m on the right track. Layer after layer, the canvas becomes a record of those micro-adjustments—my ongoing dialogue with light.
"Echo Upon Echo," 48 inches 36 inches, oil paint and acrylic marker on canvas, © 2025 Leslie Parke
Process, not product
People often ask how I achieve the “glow.” The short answer is patience. I’ll lay down dozens of layers of paint marks, letting each one cure before adding the next. The surface may look spontaneous, but it’s the result of slow accumulation—much like the way a chant builds resonance in a vaulted room.
Why the title matters
I chose FREQUENCIES because it points to two truths at once. First, every color corresponds to a measurable vibration on the electromagnetic spectrum. Second, we each carry our own emotional frequency, and it changes minute by minute. My hope is that these paintings help tune the viewer—much like a musician tunes an instrument—until eye, mind, and heartbeat slip into a shared rhythm.
Color is the first language we learn—long before words or ideas. With FREQUENCIES
I’m simply giving that language a place to sing. I hope you’ll come listen.