Artist Statement:
My goal is to appreciate and learn from every day and every experience. Small, simple moments are what really matter in a lifetime. Long lasting relationships are built out of enduring and appreciating the everyday.
From early on in my art practices I have been drawn to subject that are often taken for granted by those around me. Abandoned bridges, industrial sites and mines occupied my work decade ago. Later this interest manifest through many recycled and reclaimed materials inclusion into my 2d and 3d works. Today, similarly I am interested in exploring fleeting time with a common place tool.
The digital photo collages are created on my handheld device as I live and work through my day, caring for my little one, painting, exploring, and maintaining a home and family. Everyday moments are documented with snapshots and later collected into representations of that day. I use collaging, layering, double exposure, and photo editing techniques to create these images, images that are in a sense a daily log of life. From adolescents I have documented daily activities with both my camera and paint. This is the natural marriage of two practices.
Toby Penney is a southern artist working in paint, photography, printmaking and multiple sculpture media. She creates work accepting, even glorifying simple objects and fleeting moments. Penney holds a sculpture degree from Middle Tennessee State University. From 2005 until 2010 she held a Vitreography internship with Master Printmaker Judith O’Rourke at Harvey K. Littleton Studios, in Western North Carolina. She was honored when asked by the studio to photograph the process for the first Littleton sanctioned studio manual/ book about Vitreography. In the Fall of 2008 Toby was the guest artist in the printmaking department at Penland School of Craft, working with book/paper artist Frank Brannon of Speak Easy Press. Find Penney’s paintings in private and corporate collections and museums. Her images can be found on the cover of Professional Artist Magazine and Hellbent Magazine and featured in Numinous Magazine, Feroce Magazine, and Polonium II, a book by David Downs, among others. She is currently developing a new publication featuring interviews with working artists and crafts people as well as exploring film making as a medium to expand her voice.