Yellowstone Summit: Interviewing the Artist, Parks Reece

Parks Reece had the pleasure of joining the Yellowstone Summit for their 2025 artist interview series. Transcript can be found below.

Parks Reece

[00:00:00]

[00:00:08] George Bumann: Well, I want to welcome you to the Yellowstone Summit. Thank you, everybody, for joining me here. I'm George Bumann with A Yellowstone Life, and today it's my pleasure to introduce Parks Reece here at the Summit. Parks, thanks so much for being with us here at the Summit today.

[00:00:22] Parks Reece: It's a pleasure.

[00:00:23] George Bumann: Yeah, he fits right in. He's an incredible visual artist from Livingston, Montana, and he's, like I said, he's right in with our mission here at the summit, which is to bring the very best that Yellowstone country has to offer, whether that's the arts, sciences, indigenous perspectives, trip planning, photography, history, you name it, and I'm glad you're here today, and we're going to talk about your art, man.

[00:00:46] Parks Reece: Cool! Cool!

[00:00:48] George Bumann: Well, many folks may know you already, because your work is, is It's everywhere. It's on license plates. It's in all kinds of places, but, in case they don't know your work or would like to know more, I'm going to read just a little of your bio before we dive in. Sound good?

[00:01:05] Parks Reece: Yeah, yeah.

[00:01:06] George Bumann: All right. All right. Well, Parks Reece is an artist based in Livingston, Montana, whose distinctive paintings, lithographs, and prints have been exhibited in private collections across the United States, and public collections, of course, in Canada and Europe as well. Parks was born in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and was taught art by his mother, nationally noted painter, Gwen Finley Reece, and her mentor and friend, Ruth Faison Shaw, and Ruth was the inventor of modern finger painting and art therapy, which a lot of that you dove into as a kiddo, right, Parks?

[00:01:42] Parks Reece: Exactly. She invented finger painting medium, the paint, the paper, the techniques, the same that you would have done, probably everybody out there as a child.

[00:01:52] George Bumann: Yeah, absolutely, and then from there you went on to study at East Carolina University as well, correct?

[00:01:58] Parks Reece: Yeah, a couple of years.

[00:02:00] George Bumann: In Costa Rica, and then ultimately ended up getting your BFA at the San Francisco Art Institute.

[00:02:07] Parks Reece: Yeah.

[00:02:07] George Bumann: Parks has taught extensively in all sorts of capacities, and he's been featured on numerous publications, including being a columnist for two magazines, which is pretty neat.

[00:02:19] Parks Reece: Yeah, by virtue of painting...

[00:02:20] George Bumann: Yeah.

[00:02:21] Parks Reece: ...and not writing.

[00:02:22] George Bumann: Yeah, and the commentator is through painting.

[00:02:25] Parks Reece: Yeah.

[00:02:25] George Bumann: And in 2016, he began traveling in China, where he was featured in several major exhibitions, and his book called The Wild Art of Parks Reece received enthusiastic reviews from the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and many others, and Parks created Montana's best selling license plate for the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness Foundation. Which, maybe, I don't know if you had that in your image library there, but folks might like to see that if they aren't from Montana and haven't seen it on the roads, but...

[00:02:56] Parks Reece: I could dredge one up around here, but it's not in my images.

[00:02:59] George Bumann: All right. Well, maybe there's one around. If not pay attention to the license plates because Parks is there. He's there.

[00:03:07] Parks Reece: And I'm working on one for the KGLT, Montana State University Public Radio because they saw the existing one and got me to do that. So...

[00:03:20] George Bumann: Oh, neat. When is that due to release Parks?

[00:03:22] Parks Reece: Uh, when I get around to doing it. (laughter) I'm a little late, but it's probably due to be released within about three months.

[00:03:32] George Bumann: Gotcha. Oh, that's cool. That's neat, and then it'll be available to any Montana driver to select as their license plate.

[00:03:39] Parks Reece: Correct. Yes. Uh huh.

[00:03:40] George Bumann: Oh, that's super neat. Well, if you don't mind I'll dive in with a couple questions because I'm sure folks want to know more about you behind the images and of course about the images you create as well, but first off, why Montana? How how did Montana become your home, and you're in Lvingston, and with all the places that you could end up?

[00:04:03] Parks Reece: Well, I grew up in the country without many neighbors at all and everything I did to entertain myself was in the woods. I'd get out in the morning and I'd take off in the woods cause that was, uh...I was enthralled with everything wild, and so, therefore, I knew that there were more animals than people in Montana, and the West was lightly populated by people and highly populated by animals, and it was just not very civilized, not very settled. So I just always wanted to come here.

[00:04:41] George Bumann: Yeah.

[00:04:42] Parks Reece: So I ended up following a girl here--the short answer, but I ended up staying.

[00:04:53] George Bumann: But you haven't always been in Livingston. You were in Gardiner for a while. You were in Lodgegrass, I think as well. What were you doing in those locations?

[00:05:02] Parks Reece: In Gardiner, I was learning to fish, catch rattlesnakes and wander around a bigger outdoors than I had in North Carolina and I was learning, surviving without working. I worked odd jobs. I used to show up at the job service seven o'clock in the morning in Livingston and take day labor and sometimes week labor. I didn't want a regular job because I wanted to be able to paint and run around outside, and, um, that worked great, and I ate a lot of trout and ate a lot of rabbits and I had a great time.

[00:05:44] George Bumann: You're a foodie, and I didn't read that part of your bio, but, you know, you love good food, love eating good food, love cooking good food, but a lot of what you consume, like you're just saying is stuff you've fished, caught, hunted, gathered yourself.

[00:05:58] Parks Reece: That's true. I grew up hunting and first of all, running around in the woods and both of my grandfathers were great woodsmen. They were great outdoorsmen and they were squirrel hunters and, squirrel hunters and quail hunters, and we always ate that, and, therefore, I just grew up to want to do that too, but I graduated into deer and elk out here and it made it fun to go hunting because when you go hunting, you're out there, you're seeing everything out there in the wild, in the wilderness, and not just looking to shoot something, but you're just seeing the whole wonders of the world, and it just became great fun, just mystifyingly wonderful to me to make that be what I ate predominately.

[00:06:49] George Bumann: Yeah, and you're right, I, you know, as an artist myself, you can go out for any reason, but the things you're exposed to are infinite, and I love that part about it. You might be walking the dog one day. Yes, it might be going fishing or going for a hike, but as much as you think you're going for one objective, you get so much more.

[00:07:12] I love, I think, I don't know if this was in a conversation you and I had in the past, but one of the reasons you love fishing and the overlap between fishing and your art is that, just holding a fish, you see all the colors of the spectrum right there in that one creature, and I love that idea, your passion for color and so on.

[00:07:34] Parks Reece: And you turn that fish, that trout, and it reflects the sun. You're seeing every color in the spectrum and more, more than you realized.

[00:07:44] George Bumann: Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of your, so of course a lot of your subject matter has to do with wildlife and the landscape out here and you're a funny guy. That's one of the things I admire and enjoy about you most is your sense of humor, but I think your work is...I enjoy your work too because, as much as art's job is to, to appeal to us visually, it's not just, it's not just pretty. It has a message...

[00:08:14] Parks Reece: Yeah.

[00:08:14] George Bumann: ...as well.

[00:08:15] Parks Reece: And you can get multiple tasks from your art. You can inspire people with beautiful color and a beautiful picture, but then you can add more with a message of something more poignant, such as that we're getting away from nature and to pay attention to animals and such, and you can add just slapstick humor.

[00:08:42] George Bumann: Your play on words for a lot of your titles just leave me in stitches. I think you had, it's a great example, I think like there's--and I think this one was talked about in the Bozeman Chronicle at one point too--is the Bisontennial, right?

[00:08:59] You remember that piece?

[00:09:00] Parks Reece: Yes.

[00:09:01] George Bumann: ...and this piece was the bison, a group of bison in front of fireworks.

[00:09:07] Parks Reece: Right.

[00:09:08] George Bumann: And that title, you know, on the surface, we're thinking, you know, okay, this is the 4th of July and here's some bison. The real story behind that piece was actually it was celebrating or honoring, recognizing the date that we basically killed the last of the wild bison.

[00:09:27] Parks Reece: That's right. That's right.

[00:09:29] George Bumann: And I think, you know, your pieces have that initial appeal, but they also have more beneath the surface that is important for people to get. It's never just face value. I think that's what I enjoy about a Parks Reece painting on the whole is that you have all these layers to it. It has a lot more meaning and folks who have that work, if they haven't appreciated that, I think might more hearing you talk about it.

[00:10:01] Parks Reece: Yeah, well, I'm not...you know, I work by my intuition and it's what I'm drawn to do, and it's what I really love to do, and it keeps me as moderately sane as I am, which is questionable, but, um, I do what I really am drawn to and compelled to do, and I've thought about things like that since childhood and my mother got me painting when I was a little kid as a way to kind of take care of me and babysit me, and I was actually interested in doing things like that then, and I never really made it formulaic or thought about it much. It's just what I, when I sat down to paint, that came out, and I like to take topics, current topics, like, such as the Bisontennial. Like, once I realized well into adulthood that we'd eradicated 50 or 60 million bison, it really made me sad. I'd never thought about it. I don't think most people think about that, that this whole country almost East Coast to West Coast was full of Buffalo and I'm not trying to make us feel bad or anything, but I'm just trying to... When I became aware, it was a revelation. I never thought about until I was in my fifties, probably in the forties, but things like that, I like to portray in a painting...

[00:11:35] George Bumann: Yeah.

[00:11:36] Parks Reece: ...with a little bit of humor.

[00:11:38] George Bumann: Yeah, I remember having that same feeling when I was doing some research on the passenger pigeons for an art program and just how many creatures there were out there and how we can't experience a one of them now. It is, you know, extinction is forever.

[00:11:58] Parks Reece: That's right.

[00:11:59] George Bumann: Keeping it, using humor like you do is valuable because it takes a little of that edge off, but it still leaves us with that message, you know, in a way that we don't completely turn away from it, I think. I don't know, has that been your experience? You know, folks who, who view your work and maybe for the columns, you know, it's when it's out there and in the press and things, do they respond to that?

[00:12:22] Do they note that? 

[00:12:25] Parks Reece: I think they do. It's hard to know once it goes out everybody's reaction, but the letters to the editor and such, they do respond to it. Yeah, and I don't think that we're, like, just horrible jerks for having eradicated so many things and hurt our world so much. I think we just didn't know any better, and I think now we're in a period of learning. I think we thought that nature and animals and the rivers and everything was just limitless, and now, at this period in history, we're realizing that we're realizing that it is limited and we need to take care of it. I don't think we realized that in times past, it's not infinite.

[00:13:17] George Bumann: Well, I want to show some of your works, but before we go there, I just want to touch a little bit on some of your process because I, one of the things I admire about you and your work is you leave that serendipity, as a friend of ours the late Floyd DeWitt, you know, raised it, you know, letting the material, letting randomness, letting all of life find its way into an interesting design.

[00:13:43] It might be abstracted, it might be, you know, you can call art whatever you want, and I know you've kind of been boondoggled at times into certain descriptions of your work, but I think at a, at the basic level, you've got pieces of paper that you've added ink to and paint and...for decades and let random things that you created help inform what you're doing now. Go into that if you would.

[00:14:10] Parks Reece: I think randomness is a way to let the universe weigh in on your painting and it does that and it sounds, you know, that's a little bit nonspecific, but I can paint very realistically, but until I get to the point I want to, where I want to make very real trout or whatever, I like to unconsciously tap into the unconscious, just using your intuition, and you can feel when you get into that point because it feels good. It's like a high and you really are tapping into something, and the old artists talked about it too, you know, some of the, some of those old guys, they talked about, well, I was just the vessel and God worked through me.

[00:15:01] I'm not, I don't say that, but I mean, they probably couldn't say, I just, something worked through me. They had to say God or otherwise they'd be accused of worshiping the devil or something, but basically you do tap into something, something is going on literally, and, I like to form the basis of my painting, just randomly moving colors around with brushes or with hands, with arms until there's something there to go, oh yeah, and then I add the focal point, the subject matter, and I already have an idea of the final subject matter, final product, but I'm not exactly planning out every little thing.

[00:15:54] George Bumann: Yeah, and by letting that in, do you think you see the world better or more fully when you're out, out for a walk, out hunting, out fishing?

[00:16:03] Parks Reece: I think you see it more fully because it teaches you to pay attention. There's a lot out there, and I know that when I was younger, I didn't always pay attention. You know, I learned to pay attention when I was young, but then when I went to college and started playing and stuff, I quit paying as much attention, and then when I came to Montana and started hunting and fishing, you really pay attention, and when you pay attention, there's an awful lot. As you know, as...and I've been enjoying your book, Eavesdropping on Animals, and I used to do that too, still do, but I mean, as a child, when I would hear a sound in the woods like an animal or a squirrel chirping usually, cause I wanted to get my way to the squirrel, I would put my hands up and then I would act like a radar and I would move until I would pinpoint that sound, you know, towards it. Anyway...

[00:17:08] George Bumann: Well, I think that's the beauty of the, that randomness of the universe, but also that inner child who seems to most tap into that easily, you know. That's where a lot of us find, it is when we're we're young. We just...

[00:17:23] Parks Reece: Exactly right.

[00:17:23] George Bumann: ...step away from it. Let's see some art, Parks.

[00:17:26] I would love to see some particular pieces there and we'll pause here for just a sec to let Robin bring up some of those pictures.

[00:17:33] Parks Reece: Yeah. Oh, you know what?

[00:17:39] George Bumann: Oh,

[00:17:39] you got the license plate. Okay, so when When we when we when we do the images That you have in the folder And then when we come back to this screen, bring that up. Okay.

[00:17:52] Parks Reece: All right. Well, this is Call of the Wild, and, of course, that's a famous title, and I revisited it. This is Call of the Wild. This is a bull elk bugling, and he's bugling into a telephone, and that is the cover of my book, Call of the Wild: The Art of Parks Reece, that helped to really further my art and it's funny, that's a corded phone, you know, the twirly cord. This dates me.

[00:18:34] It drives me nuts about these because little kids come in and go, what's that mommy? That's a phone, son.

[00:18:43] George Bumann: (laughter) I love it.

[00:18:48] Parks Reece: So anyway, that's just that's sort of nebulous. You can take your own meaning, and a lot of what I, the meanings I have in my art are not pointedly specific. They're just, you've come up with...I've done my part to show you the art and the viewer does his part to interpret it.

[00:19:13] George Bumann: Yeah. Show us another one. What, what else have you got here in the folder?

[00:19:18] Parks Reece: This is Montana's immigration policy, and this is illustrating the fact that when buffalo migrate to lower ground out of Yellowstone Park, which they do, they come into Montana and the cattlemen don't like that because they can be carrying brucellosis, although there's never been a factual correlation between buffalo giving cattle brucellosis. Cattlemen don't like just the association, the buffalo would be around because it lowers the value of their cows when they go to market. People are leery. Buyers are leery in other parts of the country. So, this is about the only grim one I've ever done, grim painting. Generally they have some humor or some light-heartedness, but this one is sort of sad, and..

[00:20:18] George Bumann: And when did you do that one, Perk?

[00:20:20] Parks Reece: I did that one about, what, nine years ago? About nine years ago or so, and I had just done a commission for Governor, then Governor Bullock, and this was always controversial, killing the buffaloes that come out of the park, and I was very friendly with the Bullock administration, and one of my friends said, well, what are you doing this for? The governor's very defensive about that stuff. He said, he just commissioned you and you're gonna, like, throw this in his face, but he didn't mind.

[00:20:58] George Bumann: It's part of the picture we live here...

[00:21:03] Parks Reece: Yeah.

[00:21:04] George Bumann: ...that needs to be in the conversation. I assume that's the calf spirit or the bull spirit when he was a little guy.

[00:21:10] Parks Reece: Yeah, something like that, and there again, that's your interpretation.

[00:21:14] Okay. Here, here we go, almost polar opposite. Some of these have, you know, ecological messages. This is just, sounded fun. The Dreaded Grizzly Hare. I always like plays on words and puns and playing around, adding funny English language to to the painting.

[00:21:39] So, the Dreaded Grizzly Hare.

[00:21:44] George Bumann: And I want to point out just the inherent beauty that's in this piece and so many others, like that foreground and mid ground and the sky behind them. There's so much variety in there that draws you in the same way that a rock with a beautiful lichen does.

[00:22:01] Yeah...

[00:22:01] You can't necessarily do that all intentionally, like, you're letting it happen.

[00:22:07] Parks Reece: That is correct. I'm letting the universe do that. I'm guiding my hand and the universe is guiding my mind, and so I'm just moving things around somewhat unconsciously and intuitively until it gets to somewhere I like, and I didn't plan it beforehand and somehow that's just an important element in doing things.

[00:22:37] There's a lot of examples around the world of people that do things unconsciously, you know, well, it's a meditation type of thing, and this is meditation become visual and there's something powerful about it because it just... if it came from the universe or the unconscious or the dream world, other people will relate to that without really knowing why, you know, you're, you're drawing something out, and so, therefore, this is humorous and I hope beautiful and just mysteriously poignant, and I don't ever know if I'm really doing that. I mean, if it's really working out that way. I just know that that's the way I am motivated and doing it, and, as it turns out, it kind of works, you know. I figured if it works for me, it will work for a viewer. I've come to that conclusion over time.

[00:23:42] George Bumann: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to proceed.

[00:23:46] Parks Reece: The title of this painting is Peace, and I did this after the election, the presidential election, and how we become somewhat acrimonious, how you got factions, the right versus the left, and I just did this as my little prompt to the world for peace and just in general, and so, therefore, the dove, which the wolf would eat if he could, is landing on the, on the wolf's head and it's peace.

[00:24:27] George Bumann: Do you find, Parks, that some of these pieces that you do out of tough situations help you process through them?

[00:24:34] Like, I know, we had a friend pass away and I didn't know what to do, I didn't know what to say, but I got a piece of wax, and just made a sculpure and somehow that helped. Do you feel that with this and other work?

[00:24:47] Yeah, it's

[00:24:48] Parks Reece: cathartic and it's therapeutic. I don't really like to use the word therapy that much, but it just makes you feel better. It makes you feel good, and to create a painting in general is joyful and I've begun to paint in the gallery, whereas I have a studio at home, but I also paint when, and so people come in and watch you paint and I find that people are fascinated because they wonder where a painting comes from. You know, where does that come from?

[00:25:19] And so they ask a lot of questions and I noticed that it's good for... They seem to feel good, you know, and I know it's, like people are anxious about our political world, about our world in general. There's always some kind of problems going on. I think there always have been, and right now there's so much media and you're zeroed in to all the problems that are going on, more so than in times before television and radio. So I think people are anxious, and so I think that when they can ask questions and see it in progress, it kind of makes them feel better. Yeah, makes me feel better.

[00:25:59] George Bumann: Yeah, problems sell newspapers and media attention time, but...

[00:26:03] Parks Reece: That's right.

[00:26:04] George Bumann: We need the antidote to that to make life whole and...

[00:26:07] Parks Reece: Well, my idea is life is about as whole as it's always been, but we have too much chance to worry about things and you gotta resist that urge.

[00:26:23] George Bumann: Gosh, it's such a beautiful painting. I love that, just the variety and depth. That's a flat image, but like, I feel like I can launch off in a space shuttle or something and go into that infinite background. I just love...

[00:26:40] Parks Reece: When I saw the Hubble telescope photographs of deep space, and then the new one, what's the, I forgot that guy's name, the James Webb, and I saw just how thick space was, with stars and planets and nebula. It just blew my mind, and so therefore, after that, I just kind of wanted to paint that, include that, those images in there and I think about it. I walk around and and just think about, wow, that's out there all the time, and it's...there's a lot going on all the time and we're aware of just a teeny little fraction of it, and I like to try to get that in a painting, you know, just that there's just so much going on, and that one way of doing that is going back to the just kind of painting from the unconscious and maybe, maybe it gets it in there. I don't know, but I'm gonna, I'm trying,

[00:27:42] George Bumann: Trying. That's the whole key.

[00:27:46] Parks Reece: I wouldn't want you to get the idea that I was really very serious. This one is Rainbow on a Worm, and this is just a laugh, and actually, to tell you the truth, I I've been skinny dipping a lot and it's always been on my mind when, especially when I'm in a lake where there's like, northern pike, you know, which are like for us, barracuda, and, you know, it's always kind of been latently a worry, but, anyway, here's Rainbow on a Worm and people get a nice little mischievous chuckle out of that.

[00:28:31] George Bumann: Actually, I got one more request for you had one with a couple of eagles.

[00:28:35] Parks Reece: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[00:28:38] This is Montana's Land Developer Management Plan and this was when I was a columnist and we were selling off so much land, and I'm guilty of that too, really. I mean, I bought beautiful, pristine land and built on it. So, I'm not innocent of this, but I don't do it in a large scale, but anyway, this was what I did for a column in Outside Bozeman magazine, and, I just thought it was kind of pertinent to all the land that was just being sold by two of the very wealthy in large tracts, and things have changed radically from when I first came here in 1978 to now, ownership of land, the less large ranches by traditional generational ranchers and more, more acquisition by the wealthy.

[00:29:50] Oh, okay, and I've got, I've got other, other paintings along this line, like there goes the neighborhood, the next, the big house on the hill that's just been built and all the little animals in the valley looking up at it going, there goes the neighborhood.

[00:30:10] George Bumann: Poignant, poignant. Show us that license plate, Parks.

[00:30:18] Some of you may recognize that plate. It's beautiful, and that's his work. I love it.

[00:30:25] Parks Reece: It's the top selling one in Park County, and then it's in the top selling ones of the state, and I was amazed to learn that it makes a phenomenal amount of income for the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness Foundation and I had a lot of fun doing it and I'm glad they're getting a lot of benefit out of it.

[00:30:53] George Bumann: We are too, whether it's on the road or on our own vehicle. We don't have that one, but we may be reconsidering.

[00:31:04] Well, Parks, thanks so much for being willing to visit here today. I certainly want to open it to you. If you have any things you want to cover here before we sign off, I appreciate you taking time to do this today.

[00:31:15] Parks Reece: It's a pleasure. I really appreciate it and it's fun, and you can go to my website and see all of my art from the last 40 years: parksreece.com.

[00:31:28] George Bumann: And folks do get through Livingston. You have a brick and mortar gallery there as well, and in a historic building in Livingston.

[00:31:38] Parks Reece: Correct. 1904 building in Livingston on Main Street. 119 South Main Street.

[00:31:44] George Bumann: And you might even be in their painting.

[00:31:47] Parks Reece: Likely will.

[00:31:48] George Bumann: All right. Parks, what a pleasure to chat with you. It's always fun. Thanks for visiting.

[00:31:54] Parks Reece: It's a pleasure, George. Thanks.

[00:31:56] George Bumann: Yeah.

[00:31:56] Hope you have a great day and keep up the good work.

[00:32:00] Parks Reece: Thank you. You too.

[00:32:01] George Bumann: Yeah. Take care.

[00:32:02] Parks Reece: Okay.