FUEL
cycle through the Duke of Norfolk’s estate.
“And there was a man called Les making
charcoal in the woods. I was drawn by the
peaty smell and used to stop, observe, listen
and learn,” says Parr.
Even his school had a sylvan setting and,
as an asthmatic, the fresh woodland walks
cleared the lungs.
“I have the patience to watch trees grow. I
love to be outside. It is so good for mental
health – the rhythm of seeing the light come
up and go down.”
The woods also informed Parr the artist
and printmaker, with tableaux in his head
and the palette to stitch together the pieces
in-between.
Parr went to the West Sussex College of
Art in Worthing, helping to pay for it by
working for a tree surgeon. Art was a
passion, with Bauhaus his movement, but he
was also in love with food.
A spell in an international school in
Belgium and he realised he was as obsessed
rural Kent in a yard of applewood my cover
was blown. I still have Lord Logs hanging up
as an alter ego when needed!’
We pulled up chairs closer to the fire with
the hearth framed by two baskets of logs.
This was no set up, but Parr could not resist
studying the texture and aromas of the
wood. It’s not second nature; it’s first nature
– at one with nature.
The conversation drifts onto printmaking,
the Peter Pan book illustrations of Arthur
Rackham, working with Cath Kidston, the art
of Grayson Perry, and a shared admiration
for the watercolours, ceramics and wood
carvings of Eric Ravilious.
Pretentious talk in a London private
members club? Far from it. Parr does not
have a pretentious bone in his body. If he
did it would probably be bone marrow with
Roquefort butter, caramelised onions and
black truffle mayonnaise.
As a child growing up in Arundel in West
Sussex on the South Downs, Parr used to
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