create an allegorical tribute to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The completed painting, The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy, is over 18 feet long and is one of the largest realist paintings ever created in America. It has become somewhat controversial, both for its unabashedly academic style inspired by Jacques-Louis David and William Bouguereau and for its highly symbolic content, said to express the cycle of denial and tragedy. It has been compared and contrasted with Pablo Picasso's Guernica and Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa, both also comments on catastrophes. Today it hangs in the Chase Wing of the New Britain Museum of Art next to figurative pieces by Julie Heffernan and Chuck Close. It has become a regular destination and subject of debate for New England residents. From 1994 to 2008 Parrish maintained a studio in Amherst, Massachusetts, sharing a home with Amherst College Professor Donald S. Pitkin, anthropologist and author of The House that Giacomo Built: History of an Italian Family 1898-1978. Pitkin's ideas of community and family influenced Parrish's subsequent works, including his current Freedom Red project, a synthesis of art and activism which donates proceeds to HIV/AIDS charities. In 2008, he relocated to Austin, Texas to be near his family, teach, and contribute to the growing independent Austin art scene, including Arthouse at the Jones Center, the Blanton Museum of Art and the Austin Museum of Art. Work Graydon Parrish's style is classical realism. Parrish counts among his contemporary influences realist painters Odd Nerdrum, Jacob Collins, Steven Assael, Christopher Pugliese and Daniel Sprick, as well as Bridget Riley. Parrish's collectors include Christopher Forbes, Michael Huffington, Diane Sawyer, Robert and Chris Emmons, Rita and David Traff, Vernon and Amy Faulconer, Therèse Garner, Lloyd and Renée Greif, and Paul and Melinda Sullivan. His public collections include the Mead Art Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, the Austin Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin Texas, the Tyler Museum of Art in Tyler, Texas, and the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut. References External links Graydonparrish.com, the artist's official website The Great American Nude Grand Central Academy of Art Skotia Gallery "Technique as Influence" lecture at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, March 2010 Lecture on Bouguereau at the Clark Museum, Williamstown, MA, March 2012 1970 births 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters Painters from