Via San Leonardo, Collier Parker, 2021, oil, 14 x 18 in. / 35.56 x 45.72 cm.

Quiet Vistas of Florence: Paintings by Collier Parker

December 30, 2025 Gavin Coates

Featured image: Via San Leonardo, Collier Parker, 2021, oil, 14 x 18 in. / 35.56 x 45.72 cm.

With these plein air paintings created on-site in Florence, Italy, Collier Parker offers a measured, luminous meditation on place, memory, and observation.

Collier Parker is a landscape painter working primarily en plein air, known for atmospheric oils that explore place, light, and quiet observation through direct experience.

Working directly from life, Parker translates the city’s layered terrain, its hills, gardens, rooftops, and historic edges, into compositions that privilege atmosphere over spectacle. These works are not postcards of Florence, but lived encounters with it: moments where architecture, landscape, and light settle into quiet balance.

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View from Viale del Torre, Collier Parker, 2024, oil, 50 x 36 in. / 127 x 91.44 cm.

Rather than dramatizing the Tuscan hills, View from Viale del Torre unfolds with restraint and patience. Rolling terrain recedes gently into the distance, guided by soft transitions of green, ochre, and blue. The elevated vantage point suggests both distance and belonging, as if the viewer has paused mid-walk to absorb the slow rhythm of the land. Brushwork remains loose yet deliberate, allowing clouds and foliage to breathe, reinforcing the sense of time passing rather than a single frozen moment.

View of the Duomo from the Rose Garden, Collier Parker, 2024, oil on linen, 23 x 18 in. / 58.42 x 45.72 cm.

In View of the Duomo from the Rose Garden, the iconic Florentine skyline emerges not as a monument, but as a presence filtered through nature. The Duomo’s dome is partially obscured by flowering trees and dense greenery, situating the city within its surrounding landscape rather than above it. This compositional choice softens the grandeur of architecture, emphasizing harmony between human construction and organic growth. Light is dispersed evenly across the scene, lending the painting a calm, contemplative tone.

Outside the Wall, Florence, Collier Parker, 2024, oil, 18 x 24 in. / 45.72 x 60.96 cm.

A quieter intimacy defines Outside the Wall, Florence, where terracotta rooftops and aged stone walls form a patchwork of warm geometry. Here, the city feels close and tactile, observed from within rather than admired from afar. Parker’s palette favors sun-warmed reds and muted greens, capturing the lived texture of Florence’s outskirts. The painting evokes a sense of everyday continuity, where history is not monumental but embedded in daily life.

Taken together, these paintings form a cohesive reflection on attentiveness and place. Parker’s Florence is revealed through steady looking rather than dramatic gesture, honoring the subtle interplay of light, terrain, and time. By working en plein air and resisting embellishment, the artist allows the city to speak quietly for itself, an approach that transforms familiar views into moments of personal resonance and enduring calm.

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