Britney Penouilh "Providence Mountains" by Britney Penouilh

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Britney Penouilh 1985-

Britney Penouilh "Providence Mountains", 2019

Plaster,Acrylic Paint

48 x 60 in

$3,200

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Artist's Statement: "In no other landscape are humans more directly confronted with the magnitude of geological time than in deserts." –The Mojave Project Across the valley, below lava flows of Wild Horse Mesa, there are ancient granitic and metamorphic rocks of Pre-Cambrian age (2 billion years). The history of the Providence Mountains, however, is full of gaps – periods of tens even hundreds of millions of years during which we only know that Erosion happened. erosion reduced the mountains to low lands that were covered by a shallow sea 650 million years ago. Rocks along the Providence Mountains Range are so deformed and altered by intrusive bodies of hot granitic magma during the development of these ancient mountains. Between 500-400 million years ago, mineral deposits of iron ore, gold, silver and lead were formed within magma intrusions. About 50 miles long and more than 7,000 feet high, the Providence Mountain are a result of recent uplift along the East Providence Fault, over 10 million years. BIO BRITNEY PENOUILH (b. New Orleans, LA) is an interdisciplinary artist whose interest in geology and natural environments has greatly influenced her work. In 2010, Penouilh earned a double major Fine Art Studio and Geology from the University of New Orleans. Through university studies in New Orleans, Greece, and Japan and artist residencies in New York, North Carolina, Alaska and California – and her interest in geology, Penouilh’s work connects landscape to ritual, and ties the spiritual realm to the scientific. In 2018-19, Penouilh worked with National Park Services on a residency within the Mojave National Preserve. Penouilh was recently a visiting artist at Pilgrim School in Los Angeles, CA where she taught interdisciplinary art to high school 3-D art students. This program included a geology field trip to collect minerals that students cast into plaster sculptures. Penouilh currently resides in Los Angeles, where she divides her time between teaching and creating art in her downtown studio.

Britney Penouilh was born in New Orleans in 1985. She has drawn since she could hold a pencil, and a class on Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain taught her to see the world like an artist. In high school, she explored pottery, stained glass, and sculpture; she attended college at the University of New Orleans, and won the Overture of Cultural Seasons award and the Svenson Drawing Competition. At college, she was introduced to her other passion: geology. Penouilh is fascinated by the millennia-long stories of erosion, uplift and earthquake that have shaped our planet; “the history of the Earth,” she says, “is the ultimate human history”. Penouilh tried working in a lab analyzing ore from a copper and gold mine, but finally decided she wanted to communicate this story through artwork.
Penouilh gathers inspiration by traveling and investigating landscapes and the rituals of the native people who live intimately connected to them; she joins the spiritual with the scientific. She has studied in Greece and Japan and been a resident artist in New York, North Carolina, and Alaska; recently, she worked with National Park Services as a resident artist living alone for a month the Mojave National Preserve. She aims to channel her philosophies into aesthetically pleasing, approachable pieces that dialogue with viewers — mixed media landscapes of geological features, as well as cast sculptures adorned with found objects and Plexiglass etchings. For instance, her series ‘Earth Through Time’ imitates deposition and erosion with additive or reductive techniques — applying and removing paint and plaster, burning and gluing book pages.
In 2017, Penouilh moved from New Orleans to Los Angeles in order to be close to international artists, galleries and museums. She has worked to integrate herself into the new art scene; these days, she splits her time between teaching and working in her studio. She is excited to bring to a wider audience her artistic vision of the ways our landscape and natural disasters affect our reality.

Sources include:
1st Dibs, https://www.1stdibs.com/creators/britney-penouilh/art/
Medium, https://medium.com/@britneypenouilh
Pilgrim School, https://www.pilgrim-school.org/news-detail?pk=1141748#
Voyage LA, https://www.1stdibs.com/creators/britney-penouilh/art/