For most of us, the recent pandemic has brought major changes to lifestyle, activities and priorities, and this has proved no different for Dundee-based professional artist and teacher Penelope Anstice.
When the WASPS Studios in Meadow Mill, Dundee, shut its doors for the March 2020 lockdown, the entire community of artists based there was forced to work from home for three months.
The restrictions also meant that Penelope had to cancel residential courses she was going to teach in Scotland, London and Spain.
However, in ways that she could never have imagined, the pandemic has turned out to be an opportunity allowing the 59-year-old Edinburgh College of Art graduate to take stock and to try new techniques, painting surfaces and subject matter.
Perth exhibition
The fruits of these labours feature prominently in Penelope’s solo exhibition ‘Lockdown Landscapes’ which is running at Frames Gallery in Victoria Street, Perth, until July 10.
“I don’t think I’d have been able to do this show if it hadn’t been for Covid-19,” she says.
“Over the years, the teaching, together with a demand for commissioned paintings, meant I was spending less and less time on my own work and painting ‘en plain air’ which I love.
“You kind of need to keep your best pieces for shows and not be selling them along the way.
“So in a way the pandemic has more enabled me to do a solo show.
“I suppose I’ve slightly benefited from it in that way, although it’s been a terrible time.”
Impact of Scottish landscape
Brought up in Lintrathan at the foot of Glenisla in a rural idyll, the Scottish landscape is deeply embedded in Penelope and she is endlessly fascinated by nature in all its aspects.
Inspired by her mother who took up amateur painting to “fill the coffers” after Penelope’s dad was made redundant in Dundee, Penelope loves the skies and the light contrasts that wild weather brings and was hugely inspired by the recent spectacular winter.
When inclement weather forced her indoors, a new departure has been painting still life – something she hadn’t done for years.
The Perth exhibition comprises over 30 pieces mostly painted over the last year or so.
Lockdown gave her time and space to look afresh at pieces she had started and not finished because “life got in the way”.
These include paintings of travels to India and Morocco, where one of her brothers lives, prior to lockdown.
She describes a lot of work as being an “emotional response” to painting on site and outdoors in all sorts of weather where she can really experience and feel the visceral beauty of Scotland’s scenery.
However, she also let her imagination run riot with some of the landscapes loosely based on places visited and in this sense the work becomes more instinctive.
“I would describe it as quite colourist and expressive,” says Penelope when asked about her style.
“Representational veering towards abstract in places. It’s really all about the feel of the paint for me.
“So I would call it quite expressive, gestural – you can see the brush marks. I’m not interested in painting photographic style work. I guess you could say it’s an emotional response really.”
Overseas art classes
Before studying drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art in the early 1980s, Penelope trained as a bilingual secretary in Dundee.
When she graduated she worked in Italy for a season in an English run art school where she was the assistant and life model.
This was followed by spells in London, Amsterdam, then London again over 15 years. She worked in admin jobs to help pay the rent and to cover the costs of her studo in London.
While it’s now 15 years since she “got off the hamster wheel” of London and moved back to Scotland where she bought a little place in Dundee, she still teaches once a year at the Heatherleys School of Fine Art – one of London’s oldest independent art schools.
Her private residential teaching courses in the likes of Italy, France, Spain and Scotland have followed since.
She adds: “I was quite lucky because I was able to take advantage of the Artists’ Support Pledge during lockdown.
“Artists posted smallish pieces for £200 and didn’t frame them. It was a way of getting by. A lot of artists joined the scheme.
“I was painting in my spare bedroom for three months because I couldn’t get into my studio. I was just painting watercolours.
“But it’s great to have an exhibition on the go again.”
Lockdown Landscapes: A solo exhibition by Penelope Anstice, runs at Frames Gallery, 10 Victoria Street, Perth, until July 10.
