Penny Walton: A harsh but delicate beauty

Penny Walton has always had a love for the Australian bush and its native wildlife. Working with gouache on paper for the first time she has created a series of bright and expressive works that play in the intersection between harsh and delicate. What started as a single still life of wildflowers collected from her garden has led to this current series of paintings. Each still life is an appreciation of the wonderful and diverse shapes and colours of birds and plants found in the Australian bush.

Living between the Hunter Valley and Sydney’s northern beaches has provided Penny with ongoing inspiration for her work as both a painter and children’s book illustrator. She studied at the Julian Ashton Art School in the 1970s before working as a freelance children’s book illustrator in Sydney and England.