I am a writer trapped in the body of a visual artist, educated in the school of life. I grew up in Ontario, Canada then spent nine years living in the United States. In the early eighties I studied at Otis College of Art and Design in California. I returned to live on the West coast of Canada and ended up working in fashion and advertising.

With the birth of my only child, in 1993, I put my career and creative pursuits aside in order to be present at home and available to my son. He was born with life threatening health issues and has various special needs. During the early summer of 2006 I began to avidly explore digital imagery.

Artist's Statement

I have been writing poetry, off and on, for the past thirty years. I was blessed to be born into a family of very literate and liberal thinking individuals. My grandmother was a journalist who, I was told, didn't start her career until she reached her forties.

I was born with writing in my blood and raised by a very creative and artistic mother. I've been doubly blessed with both artistic and literary abilities. Like my grandmother, it has taken me forty years to find my voice and begin to share my poetry and art with strangers.

I believe in the economical use of words when expressing myself through poetry. This is why I often make use of the structured haiku format. I also write free verse but strive to maintain a similar sense of simplicity and clarity. By combining my abstract images with my haiku, I create original modern haiga-- haiku painting.

I enjoy the freedom of abstract expression. Many of my pieces are created from original digital photographs of mundane objects I interact with or see in my day-to-day life. I manipulate and explore the images using various image editing software programs, including Adobe Photoshop. I focus on form and colour to create abstract images that still retain some elements of the original picture. The results have been described as deeply organic and sometimes ethereal. I enjoy pushing the limits of software and subject matter to see what I can draw out of, what often start out as, mundane photographs.


BY Penman