Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Join Painter Penny Otwell this Wednesday for First Summer Art Night Program



















Join us this week for the first weekly Summer Art Night with local artist Penny Otwell. Beginning at 5:30 PM on the front porch of The Ansel Adams Gallery, Penny will demonstrate painting techniques and discuss her work.

With a distinctive, colorful response to the land, Penny Otwell's paintings express her interest in form and light. Working primarily in oil paint she uses brushes and palette knives in an ala prima style of thick paint. Her use of color is what collectors say they like best about her work.

Most of her landscape paintings are done en plein air (outdoors in the fresh air!) but some work is studio-generated. The painter also works in watercolor, acrylic and mixed media so there is a challenge to her process of creativity. Thinking out of the box, trying new ideas, working with just line, or painting abstractly all ultimately contribute to her painting.

Otwell lives 14 miles from Yosemite Valley and for the past 42 years has made a commitment to the Sierra Nevada and her small community in which she lives and works in her Canyon Wren Studio. Currently she paints full time, but previously she has worked in High Sierra Camps, ran several Valley gift shops, and for many years directed Yosemite Field Seminars, an outdoor educational program in the Park. She acquired a thirst for learning about natural history of the Sierra and continues to share this knowledge by leading occasional naturalist walks through Yosemite. She is a self-taught painter who reads and continues to study art. Color and form represent the wild and free mountain spirit that the artist honors through her gift of painting.

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