A quick look at...Jose' Parla...

Brooklyn based artist Jose' Parla works with walls. He creates paintings that are made from and are about walls of the city he lives in. With an impulsive desire to create art on walls as a teenager he honed his skills and moved to canvas works as his skills grew. The destructive nature of graffiti art was first looked down on by people in his city and around the world but now it seems to be an accepted form of expression and these artists are now taking their work to the galleries where they sell for good money.
His works look at the deterioration of cities and his use of layering old posters, concrete mixed paint, spray paint and scratchy markings all keep him true to his artistic roots and the cultures that have used walls to display artistic creations.
His work is a great inspiration to me, the way he takes, what is essentially a scruffy derelict wall or a selection of tagged names and through his skill as an artist makes an eye-catching piece of work. I like the way he works with what he sees and what surrounds him in the same way I do with my work.
His own inspiration comes from the streets as does mine and he looks at the things I look at when I wander the streets looking for subject matter, the buildings, the surfaces and the structures.
He also looks at society and whats happening directly to the place he lives in.
His works which use the scribbled autographs remind me of Cy Twombly's paintings. Twombly is a great believer in applying text to his works to give them extra layers, qualities and meanings which rings true in the work of Jose' Parla. We aren't sure what these writings or scribblings mean in the works but we like them all the same.