Sojourner Truth Parsons Peaceful witness of sorrow III, 2023

With their intermingling bright colors, silhouetted bodies, and black fields doubling as architectural markers and framing devices, Parsons' paintings have an astounding atmospheric intensity. Her compositions hover at the threshold of abstraction and representation, swinging back and forth as recognizable shapes such as bodies, flowers, city blocks or landscapes never fully settle in one register or the other. Sometimes the association with the outside world is anchored simply by a luminous round disc—sun or moon—that lets the painting shift at the blink of an eye. Or gentle slopes and upturned curves can suddenly manifest their eroticism before retreating again into a compositional whole of abstracted pattern.