ROSS Penhall
front cover/couverture avant:
13 Wayward (detail) oil on canvas
60 × 36 in, 152.4 × 91.4 cm a B ove / c I-D e SS u S:
7 Clear Distance (detail) oil on canvas
22 × 84 in, 55.9 × 213.4 cm
ROSS P enhall
CASCADIA CÔTIÈRE
ve R n ISS age D e l’a RTIST e
Samedi, 26 octobre 2024
13 h – 15 h
Veuillez RSVP ex POSITIO n
23 octobre au 6 novembre 2024
Heffel Toronto
13 avenue Hazelton
Les œuvres achetées seront disponibles pour la cueillette ou l’expédition à la fin de l’exposition.
Pour plus d’information et pour RSVP au vernissage de l’artiste, veuillez contacter : daniel@heffel.com 416-915-4076
La vente est effectuée conformément aux Modalités et conditions de vente privée de la Maison Heffel, telles que publiées au Heffel.com. Veuillez noter que les œuvres sont soumises à la vente préalable.
aRTIST ’ S R e C e PTIO n
Saturday, October 26, 2024
1 – 3 PM
Please RSVP
e xh IBITIO n
October 23 – November 6, 2024
Heffel Toronto
13 Hazelton Avenue
Purchased works will be available for pickup or shipping at the conclusion of the exhibition.
For more information and to RSVP for the Artist’s Reception, please contact: daniel@heffel.com 416-915-4076
The sale is conducted according to Heffel’s Private Sale Terms and Conditions of Business as published on Heffel.com. Please note that works are subject to prior sale.
CO a ST al C a SC a DI a
ROSS PENHALL b E gi NS his days early. He is completely committed to his art, ready to get to his studio and resume work on paintings in progress. His voracious eye is already busy: looking, taking in a sightline, assessing light and shadow, noting textures and patterns on shapes and surfaces. This does not mean he doesn’t run around and get things done: chat with family, play with a new granddaughter, jump on the bike for errands—to check on frames or have lunch with a friend—and maybe listen to some music or an audiobook when alone in his studio. If Penhall thrives in his local community of West Vancouver, he also loves to explore farther afield. He has roamed north to Haida Gwaii and south to Baja California, east to the interior of British Columbia, Alberta and the Prairies, and the Maritimes.
On the lookout for scenes to paint, artists make choices. How and why one choice is made over another is personal. When a scene presents itself, Penhall is prepared with a sketch or drawing pad, small panels and paints in his backpack, and he may begin recording it on the spot. Later he may work these immediate impressions into larger canvases with refinements that require hours of contemplation. These studio
e SS a Y BY RIC ha RD BOY e R
15 Wind and Tide (detail) oil on canvas
24 × 72 in, 61 × 182.9 cm
works therefore mature naturally, with calm and deep development of subtle or dramatic colour complements and with a balancing of shapes. So, treatment of terrain, water, sky, and wood, grasses, or vines may be simplified and changed or retain the original energy and detail the artist captured in the open air.
In art and poetry, the mystery of inspiration and creation can seem similar. Consider, for example, Robert Frost’s work “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” 1 The poem recounts a stop on the way home to watch the woods “fill up with snow.” That’s it. Standing, alone, quiet, the poet makes some sort of connection to a moment and time when the woods were “lovely, dark and deep.” And then it is time to go. There are “promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” Frost makes something out of nothing with this poem. The place is unimportant, random, and the decision to stop unexplained and unplanned. But it mattered to Frost and, as we read the poem, rehearsing his experience now, it can still matter to us.
In this show, we see paintings that feel as if Penhall was working from direct contact with wilder places than in earlier work. Sometimes he uses wide canvases or vertical ones to engage the viewer in different ways. A wide panel, for example, creates
a vast foreground and sense of open space that forces the eye to shift from side to side. Where is the centre? How do we orient ourselves? Skies in the distance keep the horizon open even when clouds begin to move in menacingly or hover, as if waiting to pounce. Or they can seem playful, small and light as they skip towards us on the beach. With our ears pricked, head still, eyes moving, the canvas feels alive.
The water itself is powerful, its deep blue rippling, and etched with undulating lines of white foam. Tempting to approach, maybe take a dip. To one side, a scattering of logs lies on the sand. You keep looking at them. No particular reason except they look like conceptual art. A reminder, perhaps, that we are cutting down too many trees? A giant cedar presides over the group, enough of its growth rings still showing that it began its life more than a score of human lifetimes ago. It would be fine to sit and lean against it and look out for a while.
With narrow vertical canvases, Penhall sometimes depicts mountain and cliff faces that, from a dizzying height, reach straight down into a lake or coastal fjord. They are scaled up, massive, impenetrable, and we feel small, insignificant, our eyes in motion to help imagine the drama of the scene. These are perfect places for peregrine falcons or bald eagles, where, from perches near the top, they can see potential prey far below. In the distance, our eyes now at water level, there is light where granite cliffs seem to straddle a kind of opening—what might be one. A feeling of hope. Maybe room enough for a kayak to pass through.
Penhall’s narrow canvases dramatize the power of overlapping clouds boiling upward to the top edge of the frame. The clouds threaten to engulf us, to close things down. Another mood of the natural world to see, feel, think about—experience. These moods are analogous to rubato, changes in tempo and other musical variations. Musicians play the notes and passages of a composition with individual touches: staccatos, largos, pauses and rhythms that surprise us. Penhall too, in the scenes he selects, mentally works out how to shape their performance. What to centre, shade, foreground, contrast, stretch, reduce, crop, simplify.
Landscapes can reach deeply into a person. But in different ways, for through them we experience the circadian rhythm of our days, the rollover of solstices and other comings and goings of the seasons, whole epochs of fire and ice. Land and seas shape and are shaped by life. We are part of it. All of it, if we pay attention. To see an eagle in flight, a goshawk knifing through a spruce forest, or to stand next to any single tree in the forest—all are occasions for wonder. Catching a moment in time to look and listen may be our best shot at making larger connections.
Looking at Ross Penhall landscapes can take us there. They are weighty, serious, deeply thoughtful and deserving close attention. There will always be something in them we do not quite grasp—mysterious, like life.
1. In Gary Geddes, ed., 20th-Century Poetry and Poetics, 5th ed. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2006), 60.
5 Low Ceiling (detail) oil on canvas
50 × 40 in, 127 × 101.6 cm
oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-09
24 × 72 in, 61 × 182.9 cm
1 Ross Penhall 1959 –Making Your Way
A Way Around oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-26
36 × 48 in, 91.4 × 121.9 cm
2 Ross Penhall
–
The Coming Day oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-15
32 × 40 in, 81.3 × 101.6 cm
3 Ross Penhall 1959
4 Ross Penhall 1959 –The Inside oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-18 and Haida Gwaii
48 × 36 in, 121.9 × 91.4 cm
5 Ross Penhall
1959 –
Low Ceiling oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-31
50 × 40 in, 127 × 101.6 cm
–Journey Home
oil on canvas, on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-08
24 × 72 in, 61 × 182.9 cm
6 Ross Penhall 1959
Ross
1959 –Clear Distance
oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-24
22 × 84 in, 55.9 × 213.4 cm
7
Penhall
8 Ross Penhall
1959 –
Toward the Salish Sea oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-06 20 × 96 in, 50.8 × 243.8 cm
–Farewell
oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-19
40 × 60 in, 101.6 × 152.4 cm
9 Ross Penhall 1959
–Pressing
oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-14
10 Ross Penhall 1959
North
30 × 36 in, 76.2 × 91.4 cm
1959 –Calm
oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-22
24 × 84 in, 61 × 213.4 cm
11 Ross Penhall
Channel
1959 –Summer Journey
oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-29
30 × 60 in, 76.2 × 152.4 cm
12 Ross Penhall
1959 –Wayward
oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-30
60 × 36 in, 152.4 × 91.4 cm
13 Ross Penhall
Out
oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-05
60 × 30 in, 152.4 × 76.2 cm
14 Ross Penhall 1959 –Carved
15 Ross Penhall
1959 –Wind and Tide oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-27
24 × 72 in, 61 × 182.9 cm
1959 –
Desolation
oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-25
20 × 68 in, 50.8 × 172.7 cm
16 Ross Penhall
1959 –
oil on
signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-28
60 × 32 in, 152.4 × 81.3 cm
17 Ross Penhall
Sliver of Blue
canvas,
oil on panel, initialed and on verso signed, titled and dated 2024
18 Ross Penhall 1959 –Narrow Inlet
12 × 6 in, 30.5 × 15.2 cm
–
oil on canvas, signed and on verso signed, titled, dated 2024 and inscribed 24-17
19 Ross Penhall 1959
North Arm
40 × 50 in, 101.6 × 127 cm
oil on panel, initialed and on verso signed, titled and dated 2024
20 Ross Penhall 1959 –North Arm
8 × 10 in, 20.3 × 25.4 cm
1959 –
A Glimpse Through oil on panel, initialed and on verso signed, titled and dated 2022
8 × 10 in, 20.3 × 25.4 cm
21 Ross Penhall
verso signed, titled and dated 2024
22 Ross Penhall 1959 –Finisterre oil on panel, initialed and on
8 × 8 in, 20.3 × 20.3 cm
1959 –
oil on panel, initaled and on verso signed, titled and dated 2023
8 × 8 in, 20.3 × 20.3 cm
23 Ross Penhall
Cumulus
oil on panel, initialed and on verso signed, titled and dated 2023
8 × 8 in, 20.3 × 20.3 cm
24 Ross Penhall
oil on panel, initialed and on verso signed, titled and dated 2024
8 × 8 in, 20.3 × 20.3 cm
25 Ross Penhall
1959 –Soft Edges
oil on panel, initialed and on verso signed, titled and dated 2024
8 × 8 in, 20.3 × 20.3 cm
26 Ross Penhall 1959 –Keremeos
oil on panel, initialed and on verso signed, titled and dated 2023
6 × 12 in, 15.2 × 30.5 cm
27 Ross Penhall
1959 –New Castle
h effel g alle RY T ORO n TO
13 Hazelton Avenue, Torono Ontario, Canada M 5 R 2 E 1
Tel 416-961-6505, Fax 416-961-4245
Toll Free 1-888-818-6505 www.heffel.com
Follow us @HeffelAuction:
COPYRI gh T
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written consent
iSbN: 978-1-927031-71-1
B ack cover/couverture arr I ère:
3 The Coming Day oil on canvas
32 × 40 in, 81.3 × 101.6 cm
