"Like haiku poems, Vicken Parsons' small paintings articulate form, image and atmosphere to generate a profound visual and psychic impact. They are at once painterly, sculptural and architectonic.
The scale on which she works – each painting is frequently no more than 15 x 20 cm centimetres – gives her work an intensity that is curiously, both concrete and illusionistic. Applying thin layers of oil paint onto a panel, Parsons applies colour right up to its very edge, incorporating all five planes of a thick wooden board into the picture surface. Hung unframed, proud against a white wall, her paintings become dense little sculptures. At the same time their images of dark interiors appear to punctuate the wall with glimpses of deep space.“
Iwona Blazwick