Artist Statement: Margaret Adams Parker's Stations of the Cross panels depict Christ's Journey to the Cross with contemporary figures rendered in muted browns. The gold paint of the background evokes the icon tradition, while the deep red of the outer panels calls to mind the rich colors of Medieval images.
Old Testament texts at the bottom of each panel are passages traditionally considered to "prefigure" the Passion. The sole New Testament text, for the Crucifixion, is the Christ Hymn from Philippians.
Parker's focus in these paintings is on Christ's strength in the face of suffering and the intimacy of his encounters with others on his Via Dolorosa.
These painted Stations are in the collection of The University Chapel, Duke University.
The complete set of Stations, along with details, are posted at www.margaretadamsparker.com. Parker’s woodcut print Stations are published in Praying the Stations of the Cross – Finding Hope in a Weary Land, Margaret Adams Parker & Katherine Sonderegger, Eerdmans Publishing, 2019.
Bio: Margaret Adams Parker is a printmaker and sculptor whose works often deal with religious and social justice themes. She has an extensive exhibition record, including 25 solo shows. She taught painting and drawing for 19 years at The Art League School in Alexandria, VA, and has served as adjunct instructor at Virginia Theological Seminary since 1991.
Parker's WOMENAfrican Exodus, was published by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as the frontispiece to Refugee Children. Parker created a logo for Amnesty International's Northeast Regional Conference, 2011, and 20 woodcuts for Ellen Davis' new translation, Who Are You, My Daughter? Reading Ruth through Image and Text (Westminster John Knox, 2003.) She is the co-author, with Katherine Sonderegger, of Praying the Stations of the Cross - Finding Hope in a Weary Land (Eerdmans, 2019), which features her woodcut Stations.
Parker's sculpture, Reconciliation, was commissioned by Duke Divinity School. Her sculpture of MARY is installed at Washington National Cathedral's Cathedral College and at churches across the country. Mary as Prophet - He has filled the hungry with good things, commissioned by Virginia Theological Seminary, was dedicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2015 and won the 2016 Faith & Form Honor Award.
Parker designed The Communion of Saints, eight 9 foot-high etched glass panels, for St. Agnes Catholic Church, Shepherdstown, WV, and Absalom Jones and Harriet Tubman, etched glass panels for the sanctuary doors at St Paul's Church, Rock Creek Parish, Washington, DC. She created drawings based on the Common Lectionary for Augsburg Fortress' Sundays and Seasons series.
Parker writes and lectures frequently, with particular focus on printmaking and its history and the significance of the visual arts in the church. She has contributed essays to Scrolls of Love - Ruth and the Song of Songs (Fordham University Press) and Heaven (Seabury Press) and delivered the Henry Lecture in Religion and the Arts at Duke Divinity School and the McCarthy Lecture on Religion and the Arts at the Washington Theological Union.
A graduate of Wellesley College, Parker holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree from American University. She was awarded a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship and has served as a Coolidge Fellow at the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, Artist in Residence at the Center for Art and Religion, Wesley Seminary, Washington, DC, and a Calvin College Summer Seminars Fellow.
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