We recently asked our gallery artists questions to help us get to know the artists we represent better. We thought we'd share with our readers and customers so you'll get to know them too. We'll be doing at least one a month and we'll start with Penny Otwell.
Penny was born in Vancouver, B.C. Canada and raised in Los Angles, California. She currently resides in El Portal which is 14 miles from Yosemite Valley and has lived in this area for 45 years.
Her mother, Helen Loughheed, was a Vancover artist who studied under some of the "Group of Seven" (a group of Canadian landscape painters in the 1920s, originally consisting of Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley). Penny is a self-taught painter who gained a great deal of inspiration from her mother and has studied under Ken Auster, Peggy Kroll-Roberts, Alyce Frank and Brian Blood. She has been painting full time for 15 years, drawing Yosemite for over 45 and actually started painting when she was a small child.
Penny says she paints "from the heart" and doesn't usually categorize her work. She has a loose style sometimes and is fascinated with form. Her inspiration is the beauty she see everywhere, both the grand and the mundane. Sometimes the most ordinary can be the extraordinary.
When asked what kind of music she listens to in the studio, Penny said she likes it all, rock and roll, classical, chanting monks, musicals, piano concerts, blues and jazz. It's a mood thing!
Penny has other interests beside art. She also loves science, natural history, gardening, hiking, some cooking, movies, reading and her 22 year old cat, Sadie.
Tenaya Canyon
Windswept, Bridalveil Fall
