FROM her chapel-top studio in Shropshire artist Penny Timmis creates large energetic paintings of both her immediate rural landscape and that of Pembrokeshire. She favours beach, cliff and coastline, river and waterfalls, farmland and wild open spaces. In between, she paints flowers - daisies the size of a hand, a forest of delphiniums or poppies , and occasionally her work is influenced by her latest travels abroad.

The White Lion Street Gallery will show her latest selection of paintings in a new exhibition in Tenby for the month of May. Penny had her first ever exhibition over 14 years ago in this Tenby gallery, since when she has become very well known across the UK, having won awards, become an elected member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and of the Society of Women Artists in London, having been represented at the Affordable Art Fairs and being exhibited in many prestigious galleries across the UK. Her large exuberant flower paintings have shown at the Hampton Court Flower Show and the Ideal Home Show in the last couple of years and similar work will be exhibited in this latest exhibition.

Penny’s work is characterised by: colour - rich and full value, often with one hue predominating; movement - of waves crashing onto rocks, of tides sweeping into a bay, of wind disturbing trees and flowers; impasto paint - thick paint applied to the surface in lines and squiggles to delineate fronds of greenery, the outline of a flower or rock; confident compositions, reducing complex subjects to a few relevant strokes; and over all, a sense of joie de vivre about being here in this view, hearing the waves and feeling the sun, watching the clouds. The calmest works are those of quiet watersides, further hills and longer views.

Penny’s paintings are enhanced by simple deep mounts and frames, many white, with no distraction from the impressionist work they surround. Though ‘impressionistic’ and having a wealth of surface texture, the paintings rely on observant drawing skills and the means to convey much information in an artistic shorthand that any viewer can understand, without being patronised by over-simplicity or struggling with incomprehensible complexity.

In this exhibition she is also showing a collection of smaller framed sketches at affordable prices alongside the larger pieces.

The exhibition opens on Monday, May 1, and continues until the 28th. The gallery in White Lion Street in Tenby is open from 10 am - 5 pm every day except for Wednesdays.

For further information tel. 01834 843375 and see the whole exhibition on the website: www.artmatters.org.uk