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Explore Penny’s unique vision by selecting from the subject areas below.

Watercolours

Oils and Drawings

INTRODUCTION

For the past couple of years or so, I have been concentrating on painting in watercolour. I am drawn to its transparency and delicacy, and I like to build and move around layers of translucent colour, as in the Glass Vessel and Dance paintings. In one I evoke a meditative stillness and transparency, while the other excites with vigour, grace and musical movement. A series of pas de deux begin my first studies in Dance. The relationship of the two dancers moves and develops to a more complex and abstract pursuit of the rhythms and melodic intertwining lines of several dancers.

Apart from the quiet but luminous stillness of the Glass Vessels, I have revelled in the study of movement; of our emotional perception of movement  - speed, grace, power and energy. The pure vitality and grace of the athletes and dancers of the animal world, the Big Cats, have thrilled me for a long time, and I have expressed it in oil paintings. Presently I am finding watercolour a wonderful medium to experiment with movement and the sensation that movement provokes.

Just now I am engaged in a rich period of exploration with watercolour on Aquabord. This new, hard and brilliant white surface throws the light more brightly through the paint layers and increases its luminosity. The paintings can be seen more clearly because it is possible to varnish the finished painting, and it can be framed without glass.

I have also begun painting portraits in watercolours, so far concentrating mainly on children. As with animals I am drawn to the animal vitality, spontaneity and evanescence of children. Now, in watercolour, and many years later,I have resumed portraiture from a new perspective. I find watercolour so well suited to the nuance and delicacy that I want to bring to my children’s portraits.