Ian Penny

I trained as a mechanical design enginner working in several different area of industry ranging from filtration, effluent treatment to Intermediate Bulk Container sytems in powder handling technology for the food and Pharmaceutical industry. Then in the 90’s Renaissance Beams (Black Beam Renovation) my wife\s business, Penny Penny (yep that’s her name) who had invented a new way of renovating black beams in old houses without stripping, anyway that’s a whole different story

My artistic career started when I was about 10 which was as you can see a long time ago with illustrations the usual boys ideas for cars and planes etc, I then progressed onto using water colours at the age of 12, then onto a sort of flower power back in the 60’s. I started work as an student apprentice in an engineering company Vokes Ltd and ended up working the design department along with about 100 other draughtsmen and women, I then moved up to the midlands and worked for 2 or 3 company’s in mechanical design but I still did my paintings experimenting with different mediums, I moved to evesham in the 80’s where I lost aproximatrly 20 years on work in my cellar which flooded (I saved just 2 pieces of work) which strongly didn’t bother me as I thought I’d just paint them again but I didn’t (it very difficult to redo an original they are never as good so I left the art for a few years until I met and married Penny who was at the time primarily a portrait artist which got me back into drawing and painting again. We did many exhibitions with my brother David (a member of the Wapping Group) and a friend and local artist Clive Pryke “Portraits to Landscapes” it was around this time I started experimenting with Acrylic Ink on canvas board and stretched canvases and over the years developed my own style working wet on wet using a hair dryer, air brush water spray and brushes up to 50 mm wide, I also started to add texture in the form of Acrylic paint. I am still experimenting using different methods and materials.

My Work

See all my work