By Maggie Parks
VAST Senior Exhibition
April 24—May 3, 2025
Sheetz Gallery
Artist Bio
Maggie Parks will receive her B.A. in visual art studies from Penn State Altoona in 2025. Group exhibitions include Local Mythos in 2024, and Work Out in 2022 and 2023. Parks’ main mediums are oil paint, acrylic, gouache, ceramics, and digital media. Parks received the Fine Art award during her junior year at Penn State Altoona in 2024. Parks’ first solo exhibition, Before I Wake, explores the subconscious mind through dreamscapes, nightmares, and liminal spaces. These themes are recurring throughout much of Parks’ artworks. Parks lives in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, where she is creating art as she establishes her career.
Artist Statement
I have always thought that the ability and need to create is distinctly human. Since I was a child every surface I could get my hands on was covered in paintings, sculptures and photos. Art is often seen as a statement, and artists as those who have something to say. I create art to discover what I want to say; to work through feelings, hopes, fears, and questions.
My solo art exhibition Before I Wake explores the subconscious mind through dreams, nightmares, and personal myth. I used oil paint to create these works because the deep, rich colors you can achieve with oil paint adds to the depth of the dreamy, surreal environments. Creating these works gave me the opportunity to work through questions I have about the subconscious mind: Why does our subconscious communicate through dreams? Why does our subconscious torture us through nightmares? These works don’t have something to say, but cause the viewer to ask questions and face their own subconscious.
Checklist
A Drop in the Ocean, 2025
Oil on canvas
18” x 24“
The Moon Follows Me Home, 2025
Oil on canvas
18” x 24“
Outside of Time & Space, 2025
Oil on canvas
18” x 24“
Mind Palace, 2025
Oil on canvas
18” x 24“
If I Shall Die, Before I Wake, 2025
Oil on canvas
18” x 24“
Wake Up!, 2025
Oil on canvas
18” x 24“
Daydream, 2025
Digital video collage/animation
Projection