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David Parsons obituary

David Parsons, who has died aged 76, was an award-winning multimedia artist and teacher, whose work was exhibited and collected internationally. His palette was broad and innovative, adding photography and film in the 1970s and 80s, and computer-based art in the 90s, to the fine art and painting he had studied in the 60s. He won Arts Council awards across four decades.

The son of Dot (nee Hughes) and Tom Parsons, David was born in Birmingham. His father, an engineer, hoped his son might take over the family business making parts for the motor industry, but both parents recognised David’s talent for art and supported his studies at Birmingham College of Art and Design (1959-63), and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (1963-65).

David met Jenny Garrett at art school, and they married in 1964. He taught widely, including for more than a decade at Central St Martin’s, London (1985-97). They brought their sons up in the capital, before moving to Béziers, in the south of France, in 2000.

In 2010 David and Jenny returned to the UK, living in Hoxne, Suffolk, where they worked in separate studios but exhibited together, with shows at the John Russell Gallery in Ipswich in 2014 and 2016.

For David, both the city and countryside were home – and this dichotomy permeated his art. He was an intelligent, gregarious, witty and thoughtful person, in both his personal and professional spheres.

Yet, where his love for spinning a yarn and an enduring sense of play permeated the personal (often accompanied by a jazz soundtrack), his art was typically questioning and investigative. Every scene, be it urban or rural, would be separated into its critical constituent elements, against a backdrop in his head of American minimalism. This he did without reducing the world around him to absurdity; simplifying while avoiding the simplistic.

I curated and staged his final exhibition and solo show in central London, Fields of Vision (2019), at the Velorose gallery. It featured what he called a “cycle of work”, the result of a single walk in the Suffolk countryside after harvest.

David is survived by Jenny, their sons, Matthew and Sam, and grandchildren, Romy and Reuben.