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During a lecture once, Mr. Parker explained his work in this manner: "This is a cow," he said flashing a slide. "This is another picture of a cow." So, when he said, "There are two things that distinguish me from other artists, I was the hands of Vincent van Gogh in the movie 'Lust for Life,' and I learned how to paint in bed," this reporter decided to just let him roll.
Story One: As a child growing up in Grosse Pointe, Mich., Mr. Parker contracted tuberculosis. His doctor advised a dry climate, so his parents and older brother William consequently moved to the tiny town of Fort Stanton, N. M. "I lived on the porch, and that was the entertainment, read or draw," Mr. Parker said. "So I drew-that was it."
His mother, Harriett Cowdin Parker, had artistic leanings. She'd been offered a scholarship to an art school, but ended up working for her father while her brother went off to college. She was able to impart what knowledge of drawing technique she had to her ailing son. "TB is a completely painless disease," Mr. Parker commented. "I was tired and I was in bed for a few years, but there was no permanent damage to my lungs."
The illness also failed to impede Mr. Parker's progress through school. In fact, the local faculty had him skip the fourth and fifth grades, leaving what Mr. Parker called, "large gaps" in his education, "like math," he noted.
From New Mexico, the family moved to Seattle, Wash., where Mr. Parker found himself enrolled in a miserable art class at the local high school. Things were so bad, the young artist sought a new outlet in music-jazz.
He learned to play drums because Benny Goodman offered too much competition on the clarinet. Mr. Parker now plays professionally in venues across the state.
The family changed location again and settled in Chicago, where Mr. Parker indulged his passion for jazz. "I was a high school student in Chicago in 1943," he reminisced in a Village Voice article posted on the Internet. "One winter night in a freezing rain I went to Orchestra Hall to try to get into the sold-out Duke Ellington concert," he was quoted as saying. "In the confusion and chaos of the lobby, using a technique of backward walking and temporary invisibility, I got inside. ... I can't find the program from that night, but I remember in the second set, part of "Black, Brown and Beige" was played, the section called "Come Sunday." I was enthralled and thought I was listening to the most beautiful, the most moving music I'd ever heard."
During World War II, Mr. Parker joined the Army Air Force, and became an expert in the B-29 bomber. "The war ended while I was still in basic training," he commented, "so I didn't bomb anyone. I would have though."
Out of the service at age 21, Mr. Parker met and married Dorothy Daniels. "I got married in November of 1948 and I started school [at the Art Institute of Chicago] in September, so the timing was sort of strange," he recalled. "I finished school in 1952 and Dot and I knew exactly what we wanted to do-get out of Chicago."
The couple had two sons, and Mr. Parker applied to dozens of East Coast schools offering his services as an art teacher. Only two responded. One administrator wrote that they wouldn't be able to pay enough for the family to live on, the other was the New York School for the Deaf in White Plains, N.Y. They offered him $3,000 a year at about the same time Mrs. Parker gave birth to their third son. "I still dream about the deaf school," Mr. Parker said, "Nightmares. They were all boys and some of them were mad as hatters."
For all the trouble they gave him, the boys were docile enough to sit for portraits, and Mr. Parker painted several of them in watercolor. He also created imaginary portraits of Napoleon, Camille Pissaro and W.H. Auden as young men.
The images struck the fancy of Michael Freilich, the owner of Roko Gallery in New York. At his first show, most of Mr. Parker's paintings were sold and both the Whitney and the Museum of Modern Art snapped up canvases for their collections. Why did Mr. Parker think his paintings became such a hot item? he was asked. "They were watercolors," he said, offering no further insight. "I think people associate watercolors with a more traditional painting style."
Story Two: In 1955 Mr. Freilich got wind that Hollywood was filming "Lust For Life," based on Irving Stone's biography of Vincent van Gogh. Mr. Freilich suggested his protégé when Kirk Douglas, who was cast as van Gogh, decided a real artist's hands should be used in the painting close-ups.
The shoot was in France, so Mr. Parker was sent there to start filming. "Kirk Douglas and Liberace were on the plane," he remembered. "Liberace was wearing a cream colored camel hair coat. We were met by about 1,000 Irish women at a stop-over in [Ireland]. They really rushed Liberace. He had to hide behind a garbage can. I remember he got a big black smear on that camel hair coat."
Mr. Parker was paid $150 a week and given $25 a day for expenses. "After getting $3,000 a year as a teacher, it was manna from heaven," he recalled. "So when they didn't offer it to me, I didn't think about getting screen credit."
Objecting to the narrative, Theo van Gogh's son tried to limit the canvases used in the film. Vincent Minnelli, the director, got around that difficulty by hiring Mr. Parker to reproduce some of Vincent van Gogh's work. It meant 10 weeks on the set. "It was a good break for me," Mr. Parker said smiling. "I've never had a full-time job since that teaching job, which is pretty good for me."
Story Three: Work on the film and his subsequent success as an artist also began a series of moves that brought Mr. Parker and his family of five sons (four of whom became drummers like their dad) ever closer to Litchfield County. By 1975 they settled in Washington, and then things started to go awry.
His marriage broke up in 1980 and Mr. Parker found himself in a series of dead-end relationships. At one point he was living in his attorney's garage apartment in Danbury.
Finally, he and a new girlfriend moved to West Cornwall and eventually he bought his home there.
Happy Ending: While walking in New York City on the Fourth of July, he reconnected with a previous acquaintance, Judy Mellecker, who worked on the staff of The New Yorker for 22 years. The two were married and he managed to persuade her to live with him in Connecticut.
Those who attend the show in Roxbury will see images that reflect aspects of Mr. Parker's life. There will probably be pictures of airplanes in van Gogh clouds, of jazz musicians, animals and portraits of his friends.
He also paints insects. Why insects? he was asked. "I don't know," Mr. Parker said, shifting an empty frame in his studio. "I get interested in things."
A reception for the artist is to be held tomorrow from 2 to 4 p.m. at the library, which is at 23 South St. For more information, the library may be reached at 860-350-2181.
