Parrish’s story reads like the work he left behind: practical, hands-on, and probing. Born in 1946 and known locally as a carpenter, sign painter and muralist, he was also a Marine reservist and, after retiring from trades work, a man who painted every day until failing eyesight made canvas work impossible. His pieces range from pen-and-ink drawings and watercolors to oil portraits and sculptures, and his public work still hangs in places like the Glenwood Library and the Crater of Diamonds State Park Visitors Center.
His daughter, Elisabeth Eaton, who helped bring this show together and was in attendance at the SWAAC gallery Thursday night, said the impulse behind much of his work was simple and old-fashioned: “He just yearned to be like the old masters with a very-fine-detail oil paintings. And he loved doing portraits. He wanted to be an artist when he was three. He had his first one-man show when he was 11.” That early hunger for craft and detail became an adult life that balanced family, carpentry and art.
Walk the gallery and you’ll see what Eaton describes: faces that aren’t posed so much as caught in a private moment, religious figures and monks rendered with a solemnity that can feel, at times, ominous. But Eaton pointed to the spiritual quality of his work: “He just loved religious pieces. He would do lots of monks, prayers. You can see there's a woman with Mother Teresa. He was very intrigued with religion, God, spirituality.” She also noted the practical habits that fed his precision, how he and friends would do plein air drawings despite wind and weather, and how he once saved up for a single, expensive brush because “he loved fine detail.”
The exhibition itself is modest in scale but generous in intent. Eaton said, “There are 40 pieces here tonight. About half of them are for sale. We kept them at prices that a regular person could afford, just because he wanted to share his work with people, and he wanted his work to have a home, so it would not just rot in a room or a storage building.” That impulse to place work where it will be seen and used matches Parrish’s life fixing things for neighbors and painting murals for the community.
Parrish’s reach extended beyond the studio. He taught classes, served on arts boards, and worked with organizations from the Arkansas Arts Council to the Fine Arts Center of Hot Springs. Since his death in April 2025, his work has continued to travel, including international exposure through Bifarin Galleries, showing that regional artists often leave a wider footprint than their zip code suggests.
Eaton, who is an artist and art teacher in Texarkana herself, brings a personal note to the show. She describes inheriting her father’s easel and the steadying sense that comes with working on it: “It's like I feel a connection, and I feel like my work is getting better, because I feel like he's there with me on a spiritual level.” Her own path, earning advanced degrees, teaching young students Cubism and abstract art, and continuing to exhibit, reads as a continuation of Parrish’s insistence that art be both practice and conversation.
If you want to see Parrish’s work in person, the Southwest Arkansas Arts Council has made the show accessible: the public opening is April 10 and the exhibit runs through April during weekday morning hours. Eaton says they’d love for people to come by even if they can’t make the opening; she believes the work will reward a slow look.
