JACK PENNY BY CEDRIC BARDAWIL
Words and photography by Cedric Bardawil
I was greeted by a wave as Jack Penny directed me through the gates of his studio. I imagined a tight space when I first saw his paintings of commuters pressed against each other, but his studio in Bosham couldn’t have been more of a contrast: a large converted boat house with a jetty connecting it to the English Channel. As Jack opened his studio front, light poured in and the bold palette in his work came to life.
He pulls out a painting from his ‘swimmers’ series, showing four characters in a pool gazing into the distance, brightly lit within a void, black space which upon close inspection shows a train carriage, an earlier iteration of a ‘commuter’ work. His rendering of brush strokes and colour is reminiscent of German expressionist painters: Baselitz, Lüpertz, Immendorff, whose books are piled up in a corner of his studio. The characters Jack depicts may have left the city, but their angst remains. We go on to speak about George Grosz and his studies of early 20th century society, I notice similar commentary in his work though less pessimistic, and without the blasphemy.
Jack’s work is inseparable from his story; he left London for the reasons he paints – the crowds and the tension. There’s a whimsical side to his work, which is immediate in his ‘last orders’ and ‘private members’ series. A tall order of cocktails and martinis served by an exaggerated arm moves the conversation onto Dukes Bar in London.
Jack continues to express how important city life is to his painting, and that whilst living by the coast gives him a sense of perspective, he couldn’t live without regular visits to London to keep his subjects alive and him in the frame.
