Canadian-born, Texas-based artist Rod Penner seeks out abandoned and forgotten landscapes in small Texas towns as the subject of his photo-informed paintings. Though clearly remnants of once prosperous times, his chosen scenes possess a warm, cinematic quality, in part due to the beautiful light quality Penner captures through his meticulous painting technique. As meditations on the recent past and the passage of time, they are surprisingly evocative, familiar places.
Art historian John Seed writes, “Penner's work displays a profound and genuine sense of American culture. He is an individual—a classic outsider in many ways—who walks his own road and then paints it with astonishing singularity.”
Reference Photo
JOKER COFFEE SHOP, Acrylic on panel, 6 x 6 in.
Rod Penner was born in 1965 in Vancouver, British Columbia. He attended Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Canada from 1982-83 before receiving a Bachelor of Arts from ORU in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1986.
His first solo exhibition was at Kauffman Galleries in Houston, Texas. He has had solo exhibitions at such venues as Tampa Museum of Art in Florida, Flint Institute of Art in Michigan, Miles McEnery Gallery in New York City, O.K. Harris Works of Art in New York City, and Amarillo Museum of Art in Texas. He is represented by Louis K. Meisel Gallery in New York.
Recent group exhibitions include “Hyperrealism - 50 Years of Painting,” Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; “Photorealism. 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Painting,” which traveled to Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia, Musée d’Ixelles, Ixelles, Belgium, and Osthaus Museum Hagen, Hagen, Germany; “Differing Views: Rackstraw Downes, Richard Estes, Yvonne Jacquette, Andrew Lenaghan and Rod Penner,” George Adams Gallery, New York, NY; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; “Hyperrealism 1967 – 2013,” Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain; and “Photorealism: 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Painting,” which traveled to Kunsthalle Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, England; and Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium.
His work is included in numerous private and public collections, including the permanent collections of Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY; Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL; Philbrook Museum of Art Tulsa, OK; Virlane Foundation, New Orleans, LA; and Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI, among others.
Penner lives and works with his wife, Debbie, in the Texas Hill Country. They have five children.