Aaron Parazette is the current artist-in-residence at the Elaine de Kooning House in East Hampton. During his residence, Parazette intends to extend on a series of small paintings collectively titled “Color Keys.”
Working on intimate panels of various shapes, Parazette operates in the territory of hard-edge abstraction, with high key color and fine line interacting to create dynamic visual effects. The shaped panels provide an irregular field of play on which the color, line, and form provide a considered and insistent response. His visual vocabulary and painting methods spring from his formative years immersed in Southern California surfing culture and his interest in geometric abstraction.
In conjunction with his painting activity, Parazette plans to pursue a parallel photo project — documenting the ongoing studio process and the surrounding elements in black-and-white film in the quiet of the Long Island winter. He hopes that the new paintings and the photo work, when considered together, will have a meaningful reciprocity.
Aaron Parazette (b. 1960, Ventura, California) completed his undergraduate work at the University of South Florida, Tampa in 1987 and his graduate work at the Claremont Graduate University in California in 1990. He moved to Houston after graduate school to take part in the Core Residency Program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. He has had several solo shows and has also been included in over 100 group exhibitions. Parazette lives and works in Houston and is a professor in the School of Art at the University of Houston. In fall 2025, Skira Editions, Milan will publish a monograph devoted to his work of the last 30 years.
Since 2011, the Elaine de Kooning House, which is located at 55 Alewive Brook Road in East Hampton, has hosted events, exhibitions, and informal residencies with artists Laurie Anderson, Katherine Bernhardt, Joe Bradley, Lonnie Holley, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Keith Mayerson, Jerry “The Marble Faun” Torre, and Mary Weatherford, among others.
The Elaine de Kooning House and Studio was placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior on January 26, 2022. The residence is an affiliate member of Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Staff Writer on Jan 10, 2025