Geoff Parker

"I ended up doing a lot of portraits for the New Yorker," said Geoff. Some were published and some were not. Among his more memorable portraits are paintings of musicians Patti Smith, Chris Isaak and Lou Reed.

When asked what he liked most about illustrating a face, he said, "the eyes."

"It goes back to childhood and playing with toy soldiers," said Geoff.  "I built model airplanes and painted soldiers with my father."

In the late 1980s, Geoff and his father, Robert Andrew Parker, worked for the West Point Museum at the West Point Military Academy painting model soldiers. 

"Where do you get your ideas for fantasy scenes?" Geoff was asked.

"Being out at sea at night, seeing all those lights and using my imagination," he said. "The open sea is like a blank canvas. You see things you want to or don’t want to. You see a lot of incredible weather, incredible sunsets and sunrises that look like the beginning of time."

Movies have also fed Geoff's love of fantasy; The 1958 sci-fi fantasy film "The Fabulous World of Jules Verne," and the 1920 silent German-horror film "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" among them.

Geoff’s relationship with ships is a personal one.

"I had to do something after high school,” he said. “So, I joined the Merchant Marine.”

The “Robert Conrad” departed from the port at the Brooklyn Army Terminal and traveled to Puerto Rico and Jamaica. It was his first voyage. “They were taking samples from the ocean and charting coast lines,” Geoff said.

When asked how he performed as a mess man on the ship, he said, “not so well.”

“I kept throwing up. They fired me after two weeks.” Luckily, the ship’s engine department took him on as a “wiper.”

“You wipe down all the equipment because it sweats,” he explained. “It was a lowly job. I moved up to fire man on the Point Julie oil tanker.”

Scenes from his time working on commercial ships like the Point Julie, the Ogden Traveler and the Sealand St. Louis are permanently ingrained in his memory.

Geoff recalled abandoned ships, their carcasses stripped of parts in the South Pacific, and off-shore oil wells lit up with flames off the Saudi Arabian coast. “It looked like a scene from Blade Runner,” he said.

“And, when you’d come up on Japan, Brooklyn or Alexandria at night… coming up on the horizon and seeing all those lights. It was incredible.”

"I've always loved old cars," said Geoff, vintage cars, especially, from the Depression-Era. "I've always wanted to invent cars styles," he said. Painting gave him the opportunity. 

Geoff owned a red, 1932 Chevy Coupe as a teen. "It ran once and it started steaming," he said.

Many of Geoff’s paintings are set against starry, night skies. “Some people operate better at night,” he said. “I do.”

Geoff’s influences, particularly when it comes to landscape paintings, include Hudson River School artists such as Frederic Church and Sanford Gifford. 

Geoff readily admits to being "an airplane nut." His affinity for vintage planes developed, as with his love for cars and toy soldiers, when he was a child. 

"I built model planes," he said, and closely watched his father, who worked on B-52 planes during WWII, paint and illustrate war planes. 

“The masks come from a movie called ‘Flesh and Fantasy,’” Geoff said, a 1943 anthology film. “Edgar Barrier owned a mask shop in the movie. It inspired me to make masks that looked like they were from the 30s and 40s.”

Some of his more popular masks depict painters including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. “I’ve sold them mainly to restaurants,” Geoff said.

Geoff's newest form of artistic expression is model ship-building. The work stems from a "fascination" with the ships he served aboard. 

"I want people to see some of these incredible ships," he said.