Willard E. Parker's Art Spoke For Itself

Artist Willard E. Parker was painting canvas back when Seattle housed only a handful of galleries.

His memory will live on in the oil paintings - colorful abstracts inspired by nature - that now hang in Seattle's Frye Museum and in many area homes.

Mr. Parker, a painter who considered himself an old-school purist, died at his home in Ballard on July 27 after a long battle with colon cancer. He was 66.

Born in Seattle, Mr. Parker graduated from Roosevelt High School and the University of Washington and served as a photographer for the Army in Germany from 1953 to 1955.

After receiving a master's degree in Michigan, he returned to Seattle and taught painting and drawing at the Cornish School of Allied Arts and Highline Community College in the early 1960s.

When he wasn't raising Christmas trees on some family-owned land in Rochester, Thurston County, he worked out of several art studios in Ballard, downtown Seattle and near the Kingdome.

His wife Issa, a sculptor, said she met her husband at a party in San Francisco in 1965. They married a year later.

She described her husband as a social person with a "wry and offbeat" sense of humor and an interest in eastern philosophy.

"He could be quite a hell-raiser," she said.

She said Mr. Parker continued painting at full speed until the 1980s, when he became discouraged with business developments in art.

"He was an artist of the old romantic school that paintings speak for themselves and you don't speak for them," said Issa, adding that in later years he turned his attention to small sketches.

Mr. Parker is survived by his daughter, Hannah Parker, and her husband, Bruce Pavitt, of Seattle; his granddaughter, Iris Rose; his mother, Marie Parker of Oak Harbor, Island County; his brother, Gene of Portland, and many nephews and friends.

A memorial service will be held at 7 p.m. tomorrow in the Peter Leinonen Studio in the Polson Building, 71 Columbia St.