Pennock’s distinctive abstract landscapes draw on his extensive knowledge of technique with textural applications from thick impasto to delicate glazing. His uniquely original style was born from the desire to be immersed in nature and find harmony after turbulent past experience.
In May 2024 Colin Pennock exhibited 'Space To Age and Find Peace' at the Caloundra Regional Gallery. The exhibition ‘About Place About Face’, was curated by writer and artist Kevin Wilson, and was a follow on from a series of short films about artists responding to the influence of the land on their art practice.
The documentary 'Traverses' features an insight into the art practices behind the sixteen exhibiting artists. In the same month Colin Pennock undertook an art residency at Fowlers Gap NSW, offering Pennock further creative space to refine his observation around memory and experience.
Maria Stoljar talks enthusiastically with Australian painter Colin Pennock, about how he became an artist, the influences, painting techniques and lots more. Colin Pennock’s work could be described as landscape painting but it certainly doesn’t fall into that category in any traditional sense. Although there’s almost always a horizon line, or the remnants of one, he throws the traditional ideas of sky, land and sea into ambiguity.
The glorious pieces of impasto paint which are so distinctive in his work provide a fragmented way of seeing the world and it’s almost impossible for the viewer not to feel some response to the energy and movement generated in his work.
Colin has painted for 35 years and has exhibited in over 20 solo shows. He won the Mosman Alan Gamble Memorial Art Prize and has been finalist in many others. He was Arthouse Gallery’s featured artist at Sydney Contemporary in 2019, and his show The Modernist 2020 with Scott Livesey Galleries in Melbourne opened a few days after this interview was recorded in May 2020.
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Colin has lived and worked in many places across the globe from London to New York and across Australia, but it’s in Queensland’s idyllic Noosa Hinterland where he and his wife, artist painter Katrina Pennock, have settled for the last 10 years.
Maria Stoljar talks with Colin about his life and work, including his experiences working as a teenage police officer during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, witnessing the horror of 9/11, finding his visual language in Australia, colour, composition and more. Colin Pennock is represented by art galleries in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and London.
