Parsons is enthralled by patterns in nature.
The swirling reflections on water at a trout dock in Arkansas remind her of serpentine patterns in the Grand Canal in Venice. As she looks for subjects for a painting, she tries to open her mind and eyes and wait for an image that goes beyond mere subject matter. She looks for interplay of form and light to provide a strong underlying design. This is the abstract organization which provides the structure on which her painting is built. As a graduate student at Pratt Institute in the sixties, her work was described as abstract expressionism.