With an interest in collective memory, personal and unofficial histories, artmaking is an act of remembrance for emerging Sydney-based artist Penelope Blunsden. Painting from archives, she attempts to recall and recreate the felt atmosphere of a range of landscapes, imbuing alpine, bush, and countryside scenes with a sense of poetry, romance, and nostalgia. Opting for square or vertical formats, the artist subverts traditions of the landscape genre, with the cut-off sides of her works alluding to her source material of film slides and digital photography. In 2019, Blunsden won the MAG&M Society Youth Art Award in the Manly Art Gallery and Museum Express Yourself Exhibition. She went on to graduate from the National Art School with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2021 and has been busy since, in 2022 exhibiting in the National Art School BFA Graduate Exhibition, Clyde & Co Art Award, and Perspectives at Goodspace Gallery, Sydney.
Above: Penelope Blunsden, Baltic Star, 2022. Acrylic on board, 15.3 x 10.3cm. Courtesy: the artist.