Carola Penn was a leading Pacific Northwest artist whose paintings were rooted in landscapes both political and personal.
Raised in the Bay Area, she was educated in the 1960s at UC Berkeley. Penn studied under the leading midcentury California artist Elmer Bischoff and was influenced by German Expressionism, Paul Klee, and Van Gogh. She also absorbed much of the work happening around her at the time, notably by Bay Area Figurative artists David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, and Joan Brown.
Penn’s activism took root during the Civil Rights and Free Speech Movement. She was active with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and ultimately was arrested for participating in a sit-in in Washington D.C. to unseat the Mississippi delegation during the 1964 Democratic National Convention. She championed progressive and environmental causes throughout her life and in her work.
After moving to Portland in 1969, she dedicated her days to her work. She was productive and prolific. In the course of her career, she created series of paintings with subjects ranging from the Lair Hill neighborhood to inner-city Portland; from patches of grasses and weeds to Washington State’s Yale Valley forest; from politics to the inner space of childhood. Painting on panels of wood, she experimented with cutting and rearranging the pieces. The resulting juxtapositions were occasionally jarring, often unexpected and always provocative.
In 2019, Penn passed away after a three-year struggle with cancer. Her daughter Zoë Anderson and son Lev Anderson continue to exhibit, sell, and donate her paintings with the hope of carrying on their mother’s legacy and bringing her work to new audiences.
Please contact us if you have any questions or wish to see her work in person.
You can read her obituary here: Oregon Arts Watch
