Penny Otto

"In the 1940’s at Ilam Art School, Lecturer Rudolf Gopaz put me on track to explore the European Expressionists. Overseas travel was to prove an enrichment of this. At the beginning we all worked with oil paints but when I returned from my first overseas trip, I was told that “Everybody is using acrylics now.” It took me ten years to readjust! As students we had been discouraged from using white or black paint. I thoroughly enjoyed finding substitutes, especially  yellow, the colour of the sun.

Growing up on a farm has made me sensitive to nature in all its forms. “I wander thro’ each charter’d street,” comes from the pen of the visionary poet and artist William Blake. It often runs through my head when I am away from my lovely Glendowie garden. I need water for my painting, for the garden too, and I am happiest when I can see our estuary in the morning."

Penny Otto, Dip. F.A. (Hons) 1961. From 1961 I have carried away something from each of the talented lecturers we had at the Ilam School of Art in Christchurch, especially in the understanding of the many movements in Art. Rudolf Gopaz from Lithuania introduced me to Expressionism, which, with it's emphasis on the personal use of colour, I still see as an open door for art experimentation.

"Begun in Primary School my art life has been through many changes, and throughout themnall painting has acted like a beacon and given me a steady sense of purpose. The recent loss of my husband has been a significant change and challenge. Over the last two years of widowhood I have been able to continue to exhibit, although my art energy was low, with the stimulus of the very active Moa Egg Collective."