“Colin’s intimate works encourage you to look closely - amplifying the sense that you are looking in on something from the outside. The experience focuses your attention - asking you to look carefully and delicately (if that’s a thing).
His larger works by contrast tend to envelope you - wrapping around you and drawing you into their space. Works at this end of the spectrum disrupt your tenuous place at the centre of things….”
Michael Brennan, Journey to Paradise exhibition essay, 2025
Colin Pennock is an abstract landscape artist based in Australia
Born in Ireland, Pennock came to Australia at the age of one and has since lived and worked in Ireland, Australia, London and New York.
He came to painting and drawing from unlikely beginnings as a Police Constable in Northern Ireland, sketching whilst on duty in the height of the Troubles. These sketch books earned him a four year scholarship to St Martins School Of Art in London from 1985-89, where he achieved a BA Hons Fine Art, Painting.
Currently based in the Noosa Hinterland rainforest in Queensland, Pennock’s distinctive abstract landscapes draw on his extensive knowledge of technique with textural applications from thick impasto to delicate glazing. His uniquely original style was born from the desire to be immersed in nature and find harmony after turbulent past experience.
Pennock has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, and his work is held in prominent collections including the University of Ulster, the British Consulates in New York and Washington, the Australian RACV Collection, the Brian Sewell Collection in London and the Hawkesbury Regional Gallery Collection.
He received a residency at NG Creative Art Residency in France (2022) and has been the winner of the Alan Gamble Award, Mosman Art Prize (2005) and a finalist in the Len Fox Painting Award (2016), Mosman Art Prize (2019, 2014, 2005) and Fleurieu Peninsula Art Prize (2008, 2004).
News + Current Work
2025 has been another busy year with Colin’s first solo exhibition at Noosa Regional Gallery in February, followed by an artist residency at All that we are in Tasmania in April. He had a solo exhibition at Arthouse Gallery in Sydney in May, before heading to Europe in July where he was invited to exhibit in the Chelsea Arts Club Summer Exhibition in London and taking a residency at NG Creative Arts in Provence.
In September Colin's works were exhibited as part of the 30 Year Showcase exhibition with Arthouse Gallery and in October Colin will be showing with OTOMYS in Melbourne and then in November at Villa Alba to celebrate OTOMYS’ 15 year anniversary.
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