Terry Parmelee: Sight Lines: Terry Parmelee

Washington, D.C

PFA is pleased to present Sight Lines, the second solo exhibition of Terry Parmelee (b. 1929) with the gallery. Bringing together a focused selection of monoprints produced in 1985, the exhibition examines a period of sustained experimentation in which Parmelee explored the relationships between color, geometric form, and spatial perception. Through an inventive approach to printmaking, she developed compositions distinguished by complex chromatic interactions, rhythmic arrangements, and subtle shifts in visual depth. These works offer a closer examination of Parmelee’s individual artistic language and her place within the broader history of postwar American abstraction.

Sight Lines will be on view at PFA – Washington, D.C., located at 1932 9 ½ Street NW, Washington, D.C., 20001, from November 21, 2026 through January 16, 2027. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, November 21, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM.

Connecting across disciplines of printmaking and painting, her approach to form, shape, pigment, and flat surfaces is distinct yet linked to histories of color theorists and legacies of American Abstractionists.  Although linked to The Washington Color School, she has previously been unjustly underacknowledged in relation to male counterparts. This exhibition joins a slate of projects that seek to revisit and affirm her practice and status among her generation, solidifying her impact and influence. Through color combinations and mirroring shapes, her works trace sight lines of transient influences and training across transnational and multicultural networks, from Japan to Paris, with spectral echoes across the Atlantic to The Casablanca Art School’s parallel modernisms. 

First turning to art from science by way of an undergraduate elective, Parmelee committed to her practice through printmaking workshops, collaborative studios, and artistic mentorships. The vast scope of where her work led her can be traced to Japan, where she explored woodcut printing after relocating there with her family in the 1950s. The following decade, she became situated among avant-garde printmakers in Paris, continuing traditions of the École de Paris in Montparnasse where she joined a hive of international experimentation and artistic organizing. During the 1980s, while working at the Discover Graphics workshop, she focused on monoprinting. This interest was continued through her involvement as a founding member of the Washington Printmakers Gallery, which opened in 1985. The works presented in Sight Lines are drawn from this period, a moment where she experimented with mixing as many colors as possible to fit on one glass plate, creating prints with unique color combinations, differing with each pressing. Through various teaching positions in Maryland and Washington, D.C., she has passed this approach to experimentation and studio work forward, continuing to develop understanding around the nuance of tone, color, and perspective through pigment and application. 

Sight Lines offers a meditation on Parmelee’s practice and her focus on perspective and precision, through practice and application of color on flat surfaces. Parmelee’s contributions are increasingly recognized both in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country, while her influences and formative experiences around the world can be traced through travel routes and carefully cultivated visual patternings. Her prints speak across formal conceptions of printmaking while linking horizons across transnational confluences. Remaining distinctive in her context, her prints resonate with global parallels and complementaries, in tribute to vast geographic and formalist explorations.