About

Parker Turner is a self taught artist from Louisiana, now based in Los Angeles. Working primarily in acrylic on canvas, Turner has developed an instantly recognizable visual identity built around a recurring vocabulary of symbols. Bones and skulls speak to masculinity, mortality and the passing of time, while flowers can represent femininity, growth, abundance, purity, and life. Drops suggest sadness, sacrifice, or nourishment. The snake carries more complicated associations with knowledge, temptation, impurity, sexual desire, and intentions that remain hidden beneath the surface.

Other familiar images take on their own meanings. Hearts and expressions of love represent innocence, purity, and positivity, while alcohol can represent celebration, vice, or an influence used to cope with hardship. Bags become symbols of status, luxury, or consumerism. Guns and money explore power, leverage, authority, wealth, control, and the compromises that can come with them.

These symbols are not fixed in meaning. Their significance changes depending on how they interact with one another, allowing a single painting to hold opposing ideas at once. A line running through the center of a face, for example, represents the duality, contradiction, and search for balance that exists within all of us.

Turner manipulates this personal iconography through fragmented forms, bold lines, and vibrant color. The results of this are paintings that move between the familiar and the unexpected, using recognizable imagery to explore larger questions about identity, desire, mortality, power, and the human condition.

His work continues to evolve through experimentation and instinct, with each painting contributing to an evolving visual language shaped by his personal philosophies, observations, and emotional perspective.