Dream My Dream And Hold It To Be True, 2024, Ash, Silver Birch, Ebony, Brass, Blue Lias, 30 x 30 x 18

I see creation as transformation. Fractured stone and fractured lives hold raw potential. Through the act of shaping, what is broken becomes whole again.

Creativity dismantles to rebuild, reshaping flaws into something truer, more complete. In the act of making, destruction becomes growth, and the raw becomes whole, resonant with its lived essence.

I am the maker and the material, there is a liminal void where form emerges. My work embraces fracture as genesis. In convex surfaces, I glimpse edgeless infinity; in scars, the dynamic tension of renewal. These forms hold harmonic echoes of rupture and expansion. These flaws are not imperfections but portals, revealing the potential of creation

Yama Uba, 2024, Mulberry, Urushi Lacquer, Red Ochre, Clay, Brass, 24Ct Gold Leaf, 15 x 10 x 10

Hugin, 2023, Mulberry, 24Ct Gold Leaf, Pastels, 50 x 40 x 30

FILM

I embarked without a fixed purpose, knowing only that the journey itself would shape its meaning. The stones I encountered became silent carriers of potential, abstract forms in waiting. The process of searching, unfolding slowly, was the true creation—each step, each stone, an unfolding of an understanding yet to be grasped.

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The mended garment and the broken vessel are indicators of our dignity, of time passed, of histories sutured together, to be held and sipped from

Theaster Gates

PROCESS

I see creation as an act of transformation, whether through sculpture, community engagement, or personal reflection. In Hackney, I worked with young people at risk, those discarded by society, much like materials rejected for their perceived imperfection. Both people and material, in their brokenness, possess the potential for renewal.
The power to destroy, whether through a chisel or societal neglect, also holds the power to create. Each strike reshapes what is fractured, offering a new form, the cuts and blows of life that shape us. With each blow, we move closer to our own perfection

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Landscape Drawing, 2025, Pastels, Graphite, Earth , 190 x 120

Two Person Holobiont, 2023, Charcoal Drawing, 40 x 40

My process reflects a merging of disparate elements, spiritual, pragmatic, broken, whole. I engage with discarded and ephemeral materials, physical and human, creating an intervention in landscapes scarred by history. The cracked spaces of East London, the clay impressions and fractured streets demand attention, calling for regeneration through Art. I am becoming two, one spirit, one pragmatist. These dual selves walk together, no longer conflict but in conversation, bridging the void between the ideal and the real.

Self Portrait - Form In Magnolia, 2018, Red Ochre, Gold Leaf, Pewter, 25 x 15 x 15

Biography

Joel Parkes is an artist whose work is born from the intersection of discarded materials, discarded lives, and the transformative power of creation.

Having worked in Hackney’s fractured landscapes, where regeneration meets gentrification, he has guided young people at risk, using art as a means of redemption and renewal. His practice is a meditation on destruction as a necessary precursor to creation, mirroring the cuts and fractures in both stone and spirit, where imperfection becomes the site of potential.
Now living in Somerset, with his wife and young son, the landscape envelops his family in ways both grounding and transcendent. The hills, ancient earth, and quiet spaces offer a living presence, shaping his work and the path he walks. This rural environment has become a sacred space where spiritual and pragmatic, coexist. Here, Joel finds his practice evolving, a continual act of becoming, that art is both a journey inward and outward, a means of remaking the self