Aileen Penner

Aileen Penner is an interdisciplinary artist and encaustic painter. She visually translates the intersection of art and environmental science. Her background is as a writer and poet, it is her love of language, science and nature that informs and inspires her work. Aileen was the 2018-19 Kent Harrison Artist in Residence at Harrison Hot Springs. She has exhibited at the North Vancouver Community Art Gallery, Gulf of Georgia Cannery, Camosun College, Xchanges Gallery, The Fortune Gallery, the Ranger Station Gallery and the VIVO Media Arts Centre in Vancouver. Aileen holds a Diploma in Visual Arts from Camosun College and a Masters of Environmental Studies from York University.

I work in encaustic for its translucency, delicacy and strength. The immediate transformation from liquid to solid and back again, its willingness to be transformed, the effects of layer upon layer upon layer makes it a perfect medium for exploring our complicated relationship to grief. Themes in much of my work centres on loss: devastation of species, family fracture, trauma and where to place all that collective chaos and grief.