My New England landscapes, originate from a small sketch or they are drawn from memory or imagination. The painting is then developed in my studio into the final work on linen with many thin glazed layers of high quality oil paint and the same oil medium used by master artists historically. This archival process, which can take weeks, gives the finished painting a translucent glow reflecting nature’s own.
Penny Billings works in a unique style of contemporary realism. Painting from her imagination, memories or plein air field sketches, Penny's award-winning tonalist oil paintings capture the constantly shifting light and mood of today’s varied American landscape.
Penny is a signature member of the American Artists Professional League and a juried artist member of the Salmagundi Club. At the Copley Society, she holds the highest distinction, Copley Master and has chaired its Art and Membership Committees. Penny is also an associate with distinction artist member of American Women Artists, a juried artist member of Cape Ann's historic Rockport Art Association, and a member of the National Oil & Acrylic Painters' Society.
Her oil paintings have won numerous awards and have been recognized nationally and internationally in art competitions and in museum and commercial art gallery installations. She has exhibited in solo and group shows, including the National Arts Club and the Salmagundi Club, the Boston International Fine Art Show, the Copley Society of Art, the Guild of Boston Artists, and the Massachusetts State House in Boston, and museum and other art venues across the United States.
Penny's paintings have been international finalists in the prestigious Art Renewal Center’s International ARC Salon and in The Artist’s Magazine’s Annual Art Competition. Her work received the highest award for landscape oil painting in the American Artists Professional League’s 85th Grand National Exhibition in New York, and additional awards in its 87th, 89th & 92nd Grand National Exhibitions. Penny has also won national prizes in the Audubon Artists’ National Exhibition, in the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club at the National Arts Club in New York, in exhibitions at the Copley Society of Art in Boston, and in the Academic Artists Association’s National Exhibition of Contemporary Realism in Art.
Penny serves regularly as a juror for art competitions, and her own work has been juried into additional competitions of American Women Artists, the National Oil & Acrylic Painters' Society, the Hudson Valley Art Association, Allied Artists of America, the American Impressionist Society, the California Art Club, and the Salmagundi Club, among others.
Inspired by the American Tonalist master painters who idealized the 19th century countryside and the Barbizon School artists in Europe, and created using the best archival materials, Penny’s atmospheric oil paintings celebrate the beauty and serenity of the contemporary American landscape.