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Art - Anne Penman Sweet
Anne Penman Sweet’s pared down landscapes have been described as ‘chilled, impassive’, and regarded through an ‘unsentimental eye’. Speaking to her on the telephone I ask her whether this is a fair assessment. “My paintings are definitely not in the sentimental tradition of landscape painters”, she tells me. “But they are not meant to be cold and hard either. I suppose I’m trying to describe a certain universal quality”, she continues thoughtfully. “I want to arrest the viewer with the stillness and power of the image.” Anne was brought up in Australia, where, she says, the dominance of the landscape is at its most evident. “I believe there’s something fundamental about the human relationship with the landscape. It’s a moment where you are faced with a greater entity than yourself. I want to give my viewer that sense of being overpowered by something larger than themselves.” Her recent work makes this almost literally true - she has been increasingly drawn to bigger and bigger canvases for her latest abstract pieces. “I want to give my viewers less of a chance to escape”, she laughs. Thematically, though, the work shares several resemblances to the landscapes. Many of them are, I venture, reminiscent of Space - which is, of course, the strongest example of something inconceivably vast. “Absolutely”, she agrees, “The abstract work is all about trying to represent that enormous power with as few paint marks as possible”. “I don’t always know how it’s going to turn out, though”, she adds, “I just have to wait for the magic to happen.” ER
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