Papers of Darragh Park, an American painter and literary executor of the estate of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Schuyler. Park studied painting under Long Island painter Robert Dash.
Darragh Park Papers, 1940-2009 (MSS 743)
Extent: 6 Linear feet (15 archives boxes and 3 oversized folders)
Darragh A. Park, III was born on July 24, 1939 in New York City. After graduating with a B.A. from Yale and M.A. from Columbia, Park taught French and held various administrative positions in education in Sierra Leone. After Park returned from Africa, he studied painting under Long Island painter Robert Dash, who bought Park his first folding easel. Park became an integral part of the New York art and literary scene during the early 1970s and 80s, where he met poet James Schuyler for whom he would later serve as his literary executor.
Park at first was considered a realist painter, and often painted landscapes or cityscapes in watercolors or oil paint, depicting scenes in and around his residences in Manhattan and Bridgehampton. But later became more interested "perception" and the abstract. Park's paintings have been included in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions throughout the United States, and were frequently exhibited at the Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton, New York, and the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York City. Park's paintings have also been book covers for poets John Ashbury, Alfred Corn, David Lehman, Bernard Welt, and several covers for James Schuyler, including Schuyler's Diary, The Home Book, A Few Days, Selected Poems, Collected Poems and Selected Art Writings. Park was also a consultant to the Brooklyn Arts Institute of Arts and Sciences (Brooklyn Museum), and Associate Director for the American Council for the Arts in Education.
In his artist's statement for an exhibit in 1980, Park wrote, "Painting, for me, is an act of discovery, the outcome of which is beyond my control. The successful result is somehow evidence of the present made constant - of the way things are."
Park died on April 17, 2009 at his home in Bridgehampton.
Papers of Darragh Park, an American painter and literary executor of the estate of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Schuyler. The collection records Darragh Park's participation in the New York art and literary scene, and includes correspondence and drafts of literary works sent by friends, artists and New York School poets, as well as materials documenting Park's art gallery activity such as datebooks, reviews in art journals, gallery opening invitations and announcements, and drafts of Darragh Park: Paintings 1988-2000, a compendium of his works.
Arranged in four series: 1) CORRESPONDENCE AND WORKS BY OTHERS, 2) ART EXHIBITS AND WORKS BY DARRAGH PARKS, 3) DATEBOOKS, and 4) IMAGES.
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