Last Light over the Islands

Penelope Anstice was born in Scotland and graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1986 with a BA (Hons) degree in Drawing and Painting.  Following art school she worked in Italy for a year at the Verrocchio Art Centre in Tuscany where she met many influential artists and tutors.  Penelope also lived in Amsterdam and later in London for a decade where she had a studio at Great Western Studios near Portobello Road.  Her early work was influenced by trips to Morocco and India and following a 4 month trip to India she held her first solo show in 1990 at the Piers Feetham Gallery.

Since moving back to Scotland 18 years ago, her work has been more landscape based.  She particularly loves the west coast of Scotland and the fleeting and dramatic light there.  Her work starts off as a direct response to the subject, she likes to work en plein air initially, recording information in the form of a series of quick sketches in watercolour or oil.  Back in the studio larger scale works often starts off as figurative but then when memory and instinct kick in, they can drift and become something else, a more intuitive response, somewhere between representation and abstraction.