Mary Penn

Omphalos II
oil on plaster on panel
13.75 x 13.75 in.

My plaster and oil paintings are intensively process-oriented. When I first began making them, they represented a huge departure into a realm of chaos and chance. After the panel is prepared, plaster is thrown and dripped onto it. Throughout this process I try to strike a balance between controlling the flow of the plaster and accepting its inherently unpredicatable forms. Whenever I am working with plaster, it seems as though I am struggling to harness gravity itself.

In the paintings, shapes and tendrils suggest synapses, cellular structures, amoeba, and the human body. Through these forms, I feel I am locating evidence of all the elements which underlie all matter.

© Mary Penn