"Femme Fatale: A woman with both intelligence and sex appeal that uses these skills to manipulate poor helpless men into doing what she wants. May cause death," so says Urban Dictionary.
While these women may not be ruthless man-eaters, the women highlighted in Caitlin Albritton's "Femme Visuale" pieces aims to highlight local women artists and show off some lesser, even unknown, talent that's been hiding in the shadows. In the art world, if it ain't big and loud, it ain't being seen (looking at you, Koons). Art as a grand spectacle leaves little room for modest voices, especially women's voices.
Penelope Livingston seems to thrive in these shadows. Keeping her work pretty much to herself, I only luckily stumbled across her beautiful paintings through Etsy; she doesn't show her work often in local galleries. Originally from Atlanta, she's been a Tampa local since 1990, and has received her B.A. in Studio Art from USF, where she learned her mad skills from Jeffrey Kronsnoble and Bruce Marsh. She painted for many years in the Corina Cigar Factory in Palmetto Beach. In 2008, USF purchased one of her large-scale oil paintings for their permanent collection, where it currently hangs in the Marshall Student Center. A few years later, she became certified to teach art and has enjoyed teaching students of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds.
"I am continuously inspired and amazed by their energy, enthusiasm, and creativity," she says of her students. For the past three years, she has taught art to elementary and middle school students at Pepin Academies, a school for students with disabilities.
Penelope Livingston: I have always loved old things and old ways. When I was young and everybody was listening to Bon Jovi or Beastie Boys, I was totally hung up on Elvis Presley and Motown girl groups. I have not adapted well to the twentieth century. The pace, the heavy reliance on technology, and the noise make me go a bit berzerk. My heart sings when I see someone walking down the street or waiting on a bus bench not looking at a phone. I am obsessed with peace and quiet, and I like to see other people enjoying those things as well. I remember when I worked at the bookshop, I used to like the “sound of people reading,” just the quiet concentration, perhaps a bit of introspection: the stillness. I think my paintings are a way to celebrate those aspects of life. Perhaps if they were more prevalent in this age, I wouldn’t feel the need to convey them in my work. It makes them all the more special that they are becoming rare.
CA: Your paintings come off as very poetic, especially when you pair them with artists’ quotes like on your Etsy.
PL: I am a bit of a bibliophile. I worked in a library for five years and small bookshop for thirteen, so most of my adult life has revolved around books. I read like crazy, mostly fiction that tends to be light on plot and heavy on characterization. I can see how what I pay attention to in my paintings is similar to what is often given attention in literature. I also enjoy poetry, and tend to favor female authors these days.
CA:Do you work from photographs, live models, or from memory?
CA: Your style reminds me in ways of Chuck Close's paintings. Who are the artists you admire?
PL: I have always loved Chuck Close. The huge self-portrait with his disheveled hair, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, really drew me to him, but also his ability to adapt to his situation [he suffers severe spinal injury that’s left him almost entirely paralyzed] and carry on regardless. He is amazing and seems very genuine. I looked at a lot of pop art in my early twenties and loved the colors and smoothness of it, and I really dug photorealism back then as well. Later I became more interested in Baroque, Neoclassical and Venetian artists. I went through a huge Vermeer phase. I shouldn’t say phase; I still love him. I love Diebenkorn and, oddly enough, John Baldessari as well. To me, my work has looked the same since I was a teenager, but I guess I have gone through different phases. Juxtaposition was a huge focus when I was in college, and I enjoyed piecing together different images to kind of tell a story. Now I feel like so much more can be said with just one simple single image.
CA: Each color seems extremely considered before placement. How much of your painting is planned, and how much is just part of the process?
CA: Do you do an underpainting first?
PL: I first get the whole composition down by painting it in color, but at that point it is all very thin and brushy looking. Once the whole thing has been planned out, I tend to abandon the photograph and repeatedly go over the whole thing until it is completely opaque, smooth, and solid. That usually takes another five or six layers. It is extremely tedious, but at that point, it is kind of like color-by-number. I would say over half of the time involved in doing a painting is just mixing the colors. I use a limited palette of only red, yellow, blue, and white paint, and just mix all of my own colors from those four tubes. I never use paint straight out of the tube.
CA: What is your intention with the solid-colored backgrounds?
PL: In most paintings I am trying to draw focus to some sort of gesture or subject, and so much focus and intensity goes on there, that any information in the background seems irrelevant. I think the solid background also provides a visually soothing contrast to the focus of the painting, but at the same time, that solidity gives it a real weight, as if that huge empty space is very much part of the focus of the painting.
CA: You have done some large-scale works in the past, and now most of the paintings I've seen are much more intimate in scale. What caused you to change size so drastically?
PL: To get to this point where I work on these tiny acrylic paintings was a rough road, although it shouldn’t have been. I’m just a bit slow in finding workable solutions sometimes. I have always had a tendency to paint very large. I gravitate towards blowing my painting subject up a bazillion times, so I learned pretty early to stretch big canvases. I had the luxury of a fairly big studio space at USF, and for several years after that I shared a space in the Corina Cigar Factory. Unfortunately, the studio situation came to an end and I was left with nowhere to paint. I found it very hard to downsize since I was so spoiled by having all of that space. For many years I didn’t paint at all. I began working on small oil paintings in my home, but the chemicals involved seemed so overwhelming and noxious in such a small space. After having painted in oils for so long, the thought of going to acrylics didn’t appeal to me in the slightest, so I went another few years without painting. Then I had a career change and began teaching art to children. My first year of teaching full time just about killed me. I love teaching, but teaching full time in a school consumed my entire life and I swore if I made it through that year in one piece, I would do whatever it took to get back to painting. The following year I went part time, and painting small acrylic paintings in my home no longer seemed like a step down, it seemed like a dream come true! I enjoy the coziness of painting in my home with my dog curled up at my feet, but eventually, I hope I am able to get back to working on larger pieces.
You can follow her painting process on Facebook, where you can also find the link to her Etsy store: facebook.com/PenelopeLivingstonArtist/.
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2016.