"I look at the sky, mountains and desert landscape in order to draw on it for inspiration.  A wonderful sense of belonging, a connection to Mother Earth is felt.

I play a variety of music and let my mind wander. It is my personal journey into thought that flows out onto the canvas.

Life experiences are universal and mine speak in rich color, texture, shapes and brush strokes. Surface scratches are made and sometimes words appear.

A metamorphosis takes place that is symbolic of our lives. The subtle and dramatic changes seem to mirror my life.

The interrelationship of texture, color and how they influence each viewer intrigues me.  When my paintings evoke an emotional reaction, I have communicated well."

Featured Artist - Penny Benjamin Peterson

www.pennytheartist.com

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AZC: What motivated you to get started?

PBP: It was just something that I had to do, I just could not do it!I actually did a lot of art work as a kid, which a lot of kids do, but I think that I had a little more interest than some to where I would really work on it (art) on my own.I realize now that I was actually training my eye at an early age to see the shapes.

I would try to do portraits from watching people on television and figuring out how to make shapes, which translates to everything else artistic.

AZC: Was it always painting for you?

PBP: No!  It was really more drawing as a kid because I didn’t have access to paint. Even in school the brushes and materials we had available were not the best; however, I always did all the special school projects for the art teacher.

Also I was a very practical person and I had a mathematical background, so I really didn’t pursue art in High School. It was just something that I did on my own. My artistic expression came out in other ways: I made my own clothes, decorated my home and things of that nature.

It wasn’t until after I was married and my son was born that I actually returned to painting.

AZC: So after your son was born you were inspired to paint?

PBP: It was something that I had always wanted to do but I never really worked with fine art paint. So I began taking classes which exposed me to advanced color mixing. I always knew how to mix paint colors but I didn’t know there was alizarin crimson I just knew red, and those standard colors of paint.

Then I eventually went into water colors and then acrylics and abstracts.

I did both forms of painting until after my sister died. I stuck with the abstracts because they were a lot more expressive, a lot more cathartic to paint that way. For me I am painting a lot more emotions and feeling rather than trying to paint a particular flower. Eventually I made the total jump to just strictly doing abstract art.

AZC: So with the passing of your sister you found your creative expression? How did her passing relate to your work?

PBP: With dealing with that particular grief, I realized that I am able to work out an awful lot of things, happy or sad in painting. I don’t do any sad paintings. You know, people use the term abstract expressionism. That had a specific place in history that they used the term, and I suppose that this is what I do; I feel it. That is what I am going for with the use of different colors and shapes found in my work.

AZC: Very insightful. What type of material do you use in the development of your works?

PBP: Mostly acrylic paint and mostly on canvas. I do use some clush materials at times. Then I used a multiple of utensils and tools…

AZC: …adding hilariously…”spoons, spatulas, pizza cutters, etc.”

PBP: …whatever works to get the effect that I want on the canvas. If you will look at the canvases that are around us, you will notice that they all have a different surface. They all have some sort of texture or but they have different types of textures.

AZC: Created by the different utensils?

PBP: Correct! It might be from a palette knife, it might be a stick that I have used to scratch with, rollers which is called a brayer, a rag, whatever to get a unique effect. I have actually used cake spatula before in the creation of my work to get the preferred effect. A really big one!

AZC: How do you rate yourself among your peers?

PBP: Oh no! I’m not going there…(smile)

AZC: We don’t know your peers, the question is fundamentally designed to ask, when you look at your work in comparison to people who work similarly what do you think about your work? Are you inspired or depressed?

PBP: Personally, I am forever pushing myself to evolve and have a totally unique style that is all my own. So I may look at someone else’s work that is does something similarly and admire it, but I really try not to judge myself by anybody else.

Actually I end up being inspired by everything around me. It doesn’t have to be another abstract painter, but it could be Barbara who is painting birds, or taking hikes and listening to music. As you know, that is one of my big things, to go out and listen to music. I need to get out of my studio where I am all by myself and be around people. My inspiration really comes from my own life and my own head. I might see something that has a particular shape or color combination and decide to play with that particular color and go wherever the experiment of that takes me. I don’t stick myself in a box, in fact I did a painting called, “Outside of the Box.”

AZC: How would you categorize your art/venue?

PBP: I generically call it, “Abstract” so people know that I am not painting still life or landscapes, but a more technical term is “Non-Objective,” because there are not recognizable things in my work, at least, not usually. Like Picasso did abstract. You knew he was doing a person’s face or body, but things were not in the right place. That’s more literally “Abstract.” So people understand that when you talk about abstract that it is more commonly accepted.

AZC: How often do you showcase your work?

PBP: Always!

AZC: Define that for me. Here we are at the “Celebration of Fine Arts” and…

PBP: So I am here the first ten weeks of the year starting mid-January through the end of March, for ten-weeks, and this is a great unique experience because I can interact with more people and talk to them about my work. Whether they end up buying the work or not, a lot of times there are other artists or people like you, and hopefully if plenty of clients come through and buy your artwork too.

Other than that, I am always on show at different galleries. I may not be featured at any given time but my work is always on display at Xanadu on Main Street in Scottsdale. I am also showing my artwork in three different galleries up in Colorado.

You know the economy has been up and down in the past few years, so quite a few galleries have come and gone. Some of the galleries that I have worked with in the past have closed while some others have taken me on. The Colorado galleries I have been with for about two years, however, Xanadu, I have been with for 10-years. Right after they opened.

AZC: Let me pause here for a minute because you made a point about the economy going up and down over the last few years. How does that impact your ability to reach out to people, and not to sound personal, but has this impacted your ability to sell art, or have you found that people are more inclined to purchase art to maintain a good feeling because times are not as good as they would like them to be?

PBP: I’ve been okay, but I know a lot of artists have been down during these hard times.

AZC: What is the funniest thing that has ever happened to you while being observed developing your art?

PBP: Here, if someone just happened to be around at the time that I spilled a whole horde of bronze metallic paint that splattered up the back of a painting. This green one has the whole back of it has got this metallic paint all over it, and so you can see how it splattered a bit on the front, so I left it there. Then yesterday or the day before, I did the exact same thing with orange paint, but it didn’t go as far. It would have been really funny if it went at my feet and spattered up on me, but it didn’t. Each time I never got any paint on me. Oh wait! It wasn’t orange, it was lime green.

AZC: Reviewing the painting that Penny shows us, she turns the piece over and reveals all of the green paint on the back of the canvas. Fortunately you are not selling the back of your painting…

PBP: Well I’ve got a couple of paintings that actually are waiting for someone to buy. On the back of this one there is a very special message from my grandson.

AZC: He wrote on them?

BPB: I told him that I wanted him to help me produce this big painting because he has done some pretty cool work with me. I just kind of let him go and do whatever. So I said to him that I wanted him to help me paint this big canvas. I wanted him to help start it and put his energy into it, and what I had in mind, it was this 5 X 7 canvas that I had. Well this other one was this 4 X 6 that was just lying in my studio, so he wrote on the back of it, “First One” and then his name. Meaning that this was his first big painting, so now I’m thinking that I’m going to have to keep the piece. He’s nine now, but he was probably 7 at the time.

He loves to come and play in my studio, now he is getting old enough that rather than just doing the designs which I have hanging all over the studio (and they are great), but then he was studying President’s Day last year and so he did Abraham Lincoln. So cool. Of course he wanted my big canvas and he completed a painting of Star Wars. He’s gotten out of painting Abstracts and now he is painting Star Wars. He is now playing guitar.

AZC: Sounds like he is very artistic?

PBP: Yes, he is very musical. My son is artistic too. He could be a really good sculptor. He’s done some metal works.

AZC: Have you done any mixed media works with your son?

PBP: I’ve tried to but my son is really too busy.He does welds and works with metal. I can do designs and my son can make them for me.

AZC: What do you do differently in your technique that makes you stand apart from the others in your field?

PBP: I have developed my own unique way of applying the paint in doing my layers. You know, it is really kind of difficult to find anybody to instruct you in Abstract. I was lucky enough to have somebody kind of help guide me in the beginning. But then as I was working on canvas and getting bigger and evolving in the techniques that I was using, I realized that I’ve definitely come up with my own way of developing a piece. I have a vision of what I want the paint to look like and what I want the surface to look like. I just have a whole different way of arriving at my final piece. There are a couple of other artists that do Abstract work, and if you were to look at our surfaces you will see that we all have different surfaces. We all have our own unique way of getting there.

AZC: You mentioned the word evolved, and I have a friend who is an artist, and when I look at his work from 10-years ago, and when I look at his work today you can see even textually how different his work is.

PBP: Mine is the too. Cause 10-years ago, I thought that I was really textured well. Not compared to now, but even the compositions and things, and yet I think that you can look at my earlier work and you can see there are still elements, certain ways that someone does a brush stroke a certain way that they did their design. There will do things that catch my eye in an exhibit or restaurant or something and go, “Oh! That looks kind of like mine.” Then I’ll look at it and I’ll say, “No, I would have done this or done that.” There are just specific things that you spot.

People who are really familiar with my work say the same thing. They can spot my work. They go into someone’s house and say, “Oh! You’ve got one of Penny’s paintings.

AZC: Back to that question about evolving. When did you actually get into your art work and began growing artistically? What I would like to see is some of your earlier work so that we have something to compare your growth to?

PBP: I was doing watercolor floral right before I started producing only abstract. While I was still doing both of them, they both improved. What really defined my direction was when I had a really big show at the West Valley Art Museum. They wanted me to only show my abstracts. I was going to show them both, but they only wanted my abstracts. So I had to kind of gear up, so to speak, to have enough paintings for the show. I found that even thought both were getting better, my work was too fragmented. I was also in a Cub Gallery at that time, so I got out of the gallery and began focusing on my abstracts.

A lot of my earlier abstracts were on paper, they weren’t on canvas. I went from the water color into the abstract, so I started doing collage, and from that I needed to go into acrylic or something rather than the watercolor.

AZC: So how ago long would you say that you have been doing abstract only

PBP: Abstract only, about 15-years.

AZC: Can we get a few examples of your earlier abstracts to display with the article?

PBP: I used to paint realistically but then I grew up! The thing of it is that not everyone can see the differences in the early abstract work and the current works of today. Its not as easy as it looks. A lot of people have the misconception that you just throw a lot anything on the canvas and that’s it. I think from just seeing Jackson Pollack’s drips that his work is part of what feed the idea that abstract art is easy; but if you really get into it, you realize that you have to have all those components of a good composition. You have to have color harmony. It all has to really work or it’s not going to work at all. I think to a degree not that it is a harder thing, but it’s just different, but if you painted landscape, some things can be slightly askew in that and because people know what they are looking at they might not question it as much. If they are on the other hand, they might not know what is not working in an abstract then they really are not going to respond to it if it’s not working right.

With the abstracts and what I do, I think that basically it is color that they respond to first, that’s what grabs their eye, and then all of the rest of it comes into play.

AZC: Like these two pieces right here, I love the color in them but what made me respond to it was that they look like twins in a way, so it wasn’t just looking at a single piece but viewing the two of them side by side.

PBP: …Yeah…?

AZC: ROTFLMAO

PBP: When you have two paintings hanging together like that, these can hang separately or together, but when they are really meant to go together and I designed these so that they could, it called “dipytch.”

AZC: Will you share a secret about your art that identifies and brands your work?

PBP: What I have kind of realized this year, the two things that sets mine apart; even though other people may have their texture or might actually scratch into their painting like I do, I believe that I have a particular way that I scratch. It’s like a brush stroke, and then the way that I handle my edges on my paintings. I think those are the two things that really are a signature of what I do.

AZC: What is it about your edges?

PBP: Well the edges are not just faded and it just runs out to the edge. The edges are really addressed. So even if I frame a painting, I never cover up my edges because the edges are a part of the composition.

You can see how gumbled the paint along the edge is darker in an area. So it’s just like a little border.

AZC: What is the biggest misconception that people have about you?

PBP: You’ll have to ask somebody else…

AZC: Is there anything that you would want people to know about you?

PBP: Nope…

AZC: What advice would you give someone just starting up in your profession?

PBP: Don’t!!!

I would tell them to figure out what they need from the profession. Do they need it to totally support them? What are they willing to do in order for that to happen? Are they willing to do without?

A lot of people do the show circuit. There are a lot of different art shows on all different types of levels. Those definitely are not the best place for fine art painting. You are not going to fine someone to come in and buy a $6000 painting when there is someone selling bead jewelry next to you. Or someone who will buy a $6000 ring when there is bead jewelry in the next booth.

There are shows that are really known to be good for this and good for that, so if you are willing to travel all over the country doing that; and maybe doing weekend shows that maybe not sell anything at one of them, and yet maybe sell $20,000 at another, that’s what I’m saying about depends on what you are willing to do for it.

I’m not willing to do that. I’m too old for that. I’m not going to travel, I’m not going to lug my painting, I’m not going to try to set up a tent for a 4 X 6 painting. So I do this show. This is the only show that I do outside of the galleries. I might do a homeless show.

There are a lot of things that you can do now with the internet. There is a lot of marketing that you can do with your artwork on the internet, but it all depends on what your market is. If you can hit that market and find the best place you can do it.

Figure out what it is you like to do, what you like to paint, sculpt, woodwork, or whatever it is, and then talk to a lot of different artists that do different things and do similar things to figure out what might work for you.

AZC: What’s the most difficult aspect of trying to make it in your profession?

PBP: Oh there are so many different factors, because truly art is one of the first things that’s hit when the economy goes down. Yet on that same end, like after 2011 when the twin towers fell down, nobody knew what was going to happen here at this show in January after that event in September. What we found out is that more people were staying home and they wanted to make their homes their sanctuary. People really, their artwork is what really makes them feel good in their surroundings.

You know that you want a comfortable couch or chair, but truly it is their artwork is the more personal thing that people place in their homes. There are some people that don’t put anything on their walls, which I don’t get at all; but if you really think about it, artwork of some sort has been in all public buildings, doctor’s offices, everywhere. If there was nothing on the walls anywhere, can you imagine such a void.

People say that they are not really into art, but they don’t really realize how much they are affected by it even if they don’t own any themselves.

AZC: It is the center of our culture.

PBP: Yes, they might not pay attention to it, but they are surrounded by art.

AZC: Where do you see yourself over the next two years?

PBP: Inside that big red painting. Richer!

AZC: How do you define richer? I know that it is not defined by money.

PBP: Really, as long as there are still people that find enjoyment in my artwork, whether they are buying it or not, and I still have a good time painting it. That’s all that I need.

AZC: Would I be imposing too much to state that you really enjoy the interaction with people?

PBP: Oh yeah! That’s why I like this show. It’s twofold. Sure we are here to sell your work, but it’s the one place where you get to interact with your clients more. I do on a limited basis through the gallery (the one that is here), cause sometimes I am doing commission and sometimes I get to meet with the clients, but you don’t always, so that’s always a plus. A lot of times if I deliver it, I get to see where my work has found its home.

You can see that on my website in the installations which a lot of those were commission pieces.Then there is the combined energy of being around the other artists. Most of us really have pretty solitary lives. Working in our studios working it is a pretty solitary thing. Here working in public is a whole different thing. Here you can say, “…what do you think of this painting; do I need more green, more blue, or whatever.” So it’s kind of a nice thing interacting with the other artists.

AZC: Do you find it harder to hold your space? When you are an artist by yourself you’re by yourself…

PBP: Sometimes it is difficult because sometimes you need to just do your development. I’ve gotten over that to a big degree, but paintings sometimes go through some pretty ugly stages at times, and you need to be able to just let everybody see that. People are fascinated by it usually.That’s why this show is so successful because people love to come and actually watch the artists work.

Brad has this little bench in his booth and during the beginning of the show; people are always sitting there and watching me paint. So later I will go over to the bench and I sit to look at my paintings and decide what else I need to do to enhance my work.

You also meet a lot of new artists at this show from other places, so now I have really good artist friends that live in Chicago, Washington State, New York, Minneapolis, Utah, etc.

AZC: What will people see if they come out to investigate your works?

PBP: They will get to see what I do. People that know me but have never seen my artwork usually they go, “Oh! Wow!” They see me a whole different way.

AZC: Their perspective changes?

PBP: Yeah! It is like, “Oh! What’s in your head?” It depends on, and I think this, but I don’t know; this is just my idea of whether they are into abstract art or not. Some will go, “Oh! Now I see a whole different side of you, and I don’t know what that side is. You can probably fill in that blank.

I think that my art reflects me. I think it looks like me, but I know who I am. I look at my art as the way that I decorate my home; very casual but elegant, but I think my artwork is that way. Its complicated designs but yet they are very soothing and calming and happy looking. Uplifting!

AZC: Do you have any merchandise for sale?

PBP: Let me write this up for you Gabe. You need to buy your wife and yourself a wedding gift.

AZC: Why should a corporation invest in you, buy your merchandise?

PBP: …because it would look great in their office. That’s usually why they buy it. I am in several corporate offices. If you look at my website, I think it provides a list of facilities where my art has been commissioned.