n today’s world of anti-aging cream, cosmetic surgery and crash diets, the idea that decay and imperfection can be beautiful may seem like an absurd notion. But graduate student Elizabeth Parr has demonstrated the beauty of decay in her paintings and drawings using the human form and abstract art.
Parr celebrated the opening of her art exhibition, “HALFLIFE,” Friday and will continue showing her paintings and drawings noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays through April 26 at the Temporarily Maude Downtown Gallery. The Gallery is located at 68 W. Broadway on the downtown mall.
Parr said her artwork explores the dichotomy of beauty and decay from many angles.
“I think in our culture (the idea of decay) is a really negative thing and a scary thing to a lot of people,” she explained. “But it can be really genuine and really reassuring.”
Even the materials she uses, such as dry wall, masking tape and Elmer’s glue convey a sense of non-permanence.
Heather Russell, a fellow art history graduate student at the University, said most artists have an interest in preservation, but Parr does the opposite, and she seems to concentrate on the message having an interesting idea — not on trying to make it last.
Imperfections are another important aspect to her art, Parr said, and she tries to pick out the oddities that are normally overlooked in daily life and give them a sense of beauty.

“I leave mistakes,” Parr said. “I like that (the paintings) look really messy and garbled, because I want people to see that it’s a process.” Some of the imperfections that seem to stand out in her paintings are the ears on many of the human forms.
“I really like big ears,” she said. “It seems to humanize them. It gives them that added sort of awkwardness.”
As a child growing up in Tucson, Ariz., Parr said she had to rely on her imagination for artistic inspiration.
“When I was little, my mom never gave me coloring books,” she said. “She thought they were too restrictive, so she gave me blank paper and crayons.”
She continued drawing and painting through high school and participated in a few small art shows as an undergraduate at the University of Arizona before following her boyfriend to Oregon.
She said her paintings are very graphic, starting with a shape that is then colored. In effect, she has created her own coloring book.
“My paintings have a large element of drawing,” she said. “Drawing is my favorite thing to do.”
During her undergraduate years at the University of Arizona, Parr majored in art history and minored in painting. She is now a graduate student in the Department of Art History at the University, and she said her focus is in Northern Renaissance art from the 15th and 16th centuries. She said she tries to incorporate some of the techniques and ideas expressed in Renaissance art into her modern art using examples of some of her favorite artists, such as Egon Schiele, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio.
Parr said she loves both art history and art making.
“Each really informs the other,” she said. “I think I’m such a better artist since I look at so much art, and I’ve become such a better art historian since I’ve made so much art.”
Russell said Parr has a “perfect mix” of fine art and art history.
“She forms a good bridge between conceptual art and traditional fine art,” Russell said.
Parr said making her art is not always easy, because sometimes she will unexpectedly identify a feeling portrayed in a work with her own feelings. The insecurities and trials in her life often find their way into her work, she said, and it can be scary to expose them.
Some of the feelings in her work are expressed not in pictures, but in words.
Maude Kerns Art Center gallery coordinator Heidi Howes said she received her first look at Parr’s artwork during opening night along with other curious art lovers. She said she liked how Parr had incorporated both words and images into her paintings.
“The words really fit with what the image is,” Howes said. “They support each other.”
The origin of the words often come from random phrases or pictures seen in the media, Parr said.
“If I hear a phrase that I like or I read it somewhere, I’ll jot it down on a scrap of paper and toss it in my studio,” she said, holding up a newspaper photo she had kept for years before finding the right painting into which she could incorporate it.
“I feel like I got the maximum effect and meaning I could out of it,” she said.
Although she said she has become attached to many of the works, she said everything has a price.
“I’m just thrilled that I can put my things in a gallery,” she said, “instead of keeping them in my garage.”