Charles
Parks
Delaware
sculptor Charles Parks is well known for his monumental works for
outdoor display and large commemorative portraits. Some may be familiar
with The Student at the Newark Public Library, Vietnam from the Vietnam
War Memorial of New Castle County, and Boy with Hawk of the Brandywine
River Museum. A smaller bronze sculpture by Parks, Male Torso, is
displayed in Gallery 13 of the Museum. Based on a life study that
Parks completed in his last year at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts,
it was purchased by Mr. Biggs from the artist in 1978. Parks described
it in a letter to Mr. Biggs as “…unique in the sense that it is the only
one that I did completely. It also is the only one that has the rich
red-brown patina which I spent many days applying.”
The artist’s work can be divided into several categories: portrait busts and figures, liturgical figures, and animals. While working in a realistic tradition, elements of a fantasy world occasionally appear in Parks’s work. A replica of Nymph of the Christina, a sculpture presented to King Carl XVI Gustav and Queen Silvia of Sweden commemorating the 350th anniversary of the Swedes landing at Fort Christina, Delaware, illustrates this.
Born in Virginia, Charles Parks moved to Delaware as a young boy and
considers himself a native of Wilmington. Parks was educated at the
University of Delaware and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
He continues to work in his Bancroft Mills studio on the Brandywine in
Wilmington.
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