The following review by Gillian Cumming appearing in the Courier Mail, 03 November 2012: WORDS AND ART OF WAR Exploring the life of PoW Ray Parkin reveals the soul of an artist and a very private man, writes Gillian Cumming. The more Pattie Wright delved into Ray Parkin’s life, the more she discovered what a complex character this extraordinary man was. A naval petty officer aboard HMAS Perth when it was sunk off the coast of Java during World War II, Parkin became a prisoner of war on the Thai- Burma railway then a labourer in a Japanese coalmine. Melbourne-born
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The following review appeared in the Canberra Times, 01 December 2012: Beauty drawn from harsh places He was best known for his tales of life as a sailor, but Ray Parkin the visual artist also left behind an important body of work, David Ellery writes. John Clarke, the satirist, author and filmmaker famous for The Games, Clarke and Dawe and ‘‘farnarkling’’, met Ray Parkin during one of Australian television’s golden ages in the 1990s. Following an introduction by The Age’s Martin Flanagan, he had been working with ‘‘Weary’’ Dunlop on a proposed mini-series that would have brought to life the
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