New Artist Marleen Pennings

We are really delighted to welcome new Artist Marleen Pennings to Gas Gallery. Marleen who also works under the name of Stroke a Bird studied Fashion Deisgn and Illustration in Rotterdam and graduated with honours in 2002. Stroke a Bird’s colourful and playful works are borne from the artists' love of colour, texture and pattern.

Marleen's process mostly starts from collages taken from images, and then working within her own memory to build layers of intricately hand-mixed colours, often with very precise recipes made in small quantities which are then noted at each conception. This way of working enables the artist to create many different shades of the same colour, bringing depths and transparencies to each layer. Her process is painstaking and at times laborious. She cites her way of working as being almost layers of decisions, which colours, sweeps of paint, textures and abstract images work well together. So much of Marleen's work could be described as trial and tribulation, the artist creates many pieces and discards many, “it could be after just one sweep of paint or after 500 sweeps” and this attention to detail to what makes the grade and what is “kept” exhibited and sold is evident in her finished pieces. 

When Marleen is asked about the key factors in her process she tells us that time itself can be her most valuable tool, she starts pieces only to then purposefully take a step back, then returning to re-evaluate and re-immerse herself within a work when reinvigorated after some time away from it. Marleen is a keen music lover and music always accompanies her whilst painting, she recently attended a concert in Germany, Die Goldenen Zitronen, which has influenced her recent body of work. This all encompassing love of music is evident in her free-flowing works, and the brushstrokes in her paintings to us look as though they have music bellowing out from each image. 

GAS’s favourite work by Marleen Pennings is ‘Follow the Yellow’;  an uplifting abstract with so much soul. So often we are given abstract works to consider which are purely decorative fillers, something for interior designers to use to bring a colour scheme together, and whilst we can see Marleen’s works are beautifully decorative, we can also see the intense painstaking process that has been journeyed by the artist to create the work; and this in turn adds beauty to these pieces for us.

To view the currently available paintings by Marleen Pennings visit her page here: 

To arrange a viewing by appointment, contact Gina Cross +44 (0) 7950 415422 or art@gasart.co.uk