Artist’s Statement
Shown on this page are water-related works from two different periods. The oil painting titled Martis, which is a meadow and trout lake near Truckee, was part of a large group show of contemporary landscapes I was a part of at the Truckee Airport when I lived at Lake Tahoe. The watercolor gouache painting titled Wet Moss Rock is representative of the abstract pieces I’ve been working on more recently.
My father was a fly fisherman, and I’ve viewed this activity as his form of meditation, much as painting is for me. In the middle of midlife when I learned about meditation, the instructions were amazingly familiar to how I go about a painting. For that matter, the meditation instructions were the same as what I do when I have to figure out what to do next. It goes something like this: stop, be still, notice everything, notice between the breaths, widen the space of not thinking. This also works with animals really well; stand in nature, notice, listen, be still, and all of nature can then ignore me and resume its play. It helps to have a mild task to distract the mind, something I have done a thousand times before, the practice and art of something that becomes second nature keeps my mind still. The practice becomes the means and the results, perfecting a skill is the goal, but because it will never be perfect, aiming toward something is the constant, the something becomes an aside, and the aiming expands to be the whole reason.
By way of background, I studied at the Art Student’s League of New York, worked at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and continued my fine arts education at the San Francisco Art Institute. I also earned a degree in architecture and worked with several firms in San Francisco and Marin County. I am inspired by color, and my drawing style influences the abstract compositions of my paintings and drawings. I have exhibited in galleries primarily in San Francisco, Houston, New York, and London. My studio is in Reno, and you can view my work at www.lizpenniman.com.
— Liz Penniman
