Christopher Laurence Examines – Artist Spotlight: Eric Parrot

today07/26/2021 14

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Christopher Laurence Examines – Artist Spotlight: Eric Parrot

Christopher Laurence: What is your Faith Background?

Eric Parrot: I’m Catholic, as the majority of Brazilians still are.

Christopher Laurence: When did you first become interested in art?

Eric Parrot: I’ve had from the beginning an obvious aptitude for drawing, and it all came from there.

Christopher Laurence: Did you study art in any formal setting or are you self-taught?

Eric Parrot: I have a Bachelor Degree in Graphic Design, which I pursued as a compromise between an arts career and a way to make a living. But I am mostly self-taught, alas, even though the kind of art I like best, such as icon-writing and traditional arts in general have always been taught in a master-apprentice setting, and there is only so much you could get from books and even videos. Hard to find a master of these traditional crafts in Brazil, I’m afraid. But it’s been worse than today.

Christopher Laurence: What are the first artists/pieces of art you remember seeing and being impressed by?

Eric Parrot: Comics – I liked those already old when I was a kid, and even today I can’t be bothered to read a comic if the art isn’t gorgeous – you can imagine I don’t like a lot of them nowadays. I had an eye for the dexterity that always made me look again and again at the work by Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, or the artists from E.C. Comics like Will Elder and Jack Davis.

Christopher Laurence: Who would you cite as influences on your art?

Eric Parrot: I like Picasso’s motto ‘When there’s anything to steal, I steal’ – whenever I find something that looks valuable as a means to convey a visual effect, I make a note of it. It could be from Byzantine or Gothic art, Japanese painting, comics, mid- 20th century commercial illustration anywhere. Those of us who grew up before the internet era would have less reference images and there was more of a fortuitous character in the way we found our own style by assimilating other artists’ influence. I remember when I first got interested in icons, the books and references were very hard to find in Brazil.

I was very impressed from the start with the writings on art by the Traditionalist School authors such as Ananda Coomaraswamy, Titus Burckhardt and Frithjof Schuon. I understand that many Catholics don’t approve of the writings from that group, but every artist looking for a way out of the cul-de-sac of contemporary art should listen to what they say on the subject. That includes us Catholic artists, unless we are satisfied with making things like that Vatican Nativity Scene from last year. The paintings of the RedSkins by Frithjof Schuon had, by the way, a huge impact on my art. They were highly original and, at the same time, could well have been a form of icon-painting of North American Indians that existed from the beginning of their Civilization. There is in them an urge for a language to crystallize in a visual form some eternal truths that we can find too, in the work of an Eric Gill or even a Stanley Spencer, flawed as they both were in other realms – and who isn’t?

Christopher Laurence: How would you describe your artwork and your art styles?

Eric Parrot: I call it a sort of Neo-medieval.

Christopher Laurence: How do art and faith intertwine?

Eric Parrot: How could they both NOT intertwine? The contemporary art world likes to think itself ‘free’ from the constraints of religion, but it very much survives from the imagery and even the vocabulary of the Christian outlook they purportedly left behind. The devil after all can only mimic the act of creation, and so do his minions in the art world.

Christopher Laurence: How does your faith inform your art?

Eric Parrot: It is its raison d’être, even when the work is only a cartoon or a panel in a comic.

Christopher Laurence: What do you believe is the true purpose of art?

Eric Parrot: An object made with art, be it a Cathedral or a toothpick, should always be a support for contemplation, a sign pointing to an archetype. Schuon said that, by creating a noble work of art, the artist creates in a way his own archetype. And we all need something to show when the moment arrives when we should answer what we have done with our talents.

Christopher Laurence: Is art an effective tool for evangelization?

Eric Parrot: It has been said of the Tridentine Mass that it is ‘the most beautiful thing this side of heaven’. Many Catholics away from the Church have been attracted back by the beauty of the traditional Mass. Look at the churches we see in movies and TV series; screenwriters and directors as a rule ignore the basics of Catechism, but they do, as artists, have some perception of the rule of ‘lex orandi, lex credendi’, and that has to include a beautiful setting. Do you think we would be so invested in the personal drama of the priest in the movie ‘I Confess’ if his church looked like a Le Corbusier or Oscar Niemeyer abominations? Likewise, most Gen-X Catholics and younger saw more confessionals being used in movies or tv series like ‘Daredevil’ than in real life. And we seldom hear great sacred music in churches anymore, except when they are being used as concert venues; then the concert ends, the guy with the electric guitar and the lady who likes to sing come along for the Mass musical vignettes. Art has always been a major tool for evangelization until someone decided that the best of it should be repurposed for mere aesthetic fruition by an irreligious audience, and the faithful, and God Himself, can be pleased with kitsch and bad pop music. It is, to borrow the phrase of the proponents of Liberation Theology, a Preferential Option for the Ugly.

Eric Parrot

Christopher Laurence: Is evangelization one of the aims of your artwork?

Eric Parrot: Sure. My own evangelization in the first place.

Eric Parrot is a Brazilian illustrator and artist born in 1975, with works shown in his own country and in Portugal, lately exploring medieval-like techniques of traditional book illumination. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram.

 


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