About

Penny Ruthberg (b. 1972, Australia) is a Tasmanian sculptor. She studied Fine Arts at the University of Tasmania, earning her Honours degree majoring in Printmaking in 2013. Penny uses dog imagery as a vehicle for exploring human feelings. Her practice is inspired by the evolution of domestic dog breeds alongside human civilisation, as well as their use in folklore, art and culture.

Penny’s work reveals empathy for her canine subjects with a unique combination of humour and pathos. Her choice of materials and processes reflects underlying emotions and gives the sense of an inner world in her subjects. Sensitive and closely observed, Penny’s portraits convey much about her subject’s quiet strength, fragility and individuality.

The emotive quality to Penny’s ceramic sculptures is enhanced by her use of unglazed clay bodies and surface treatments. Her work creates a dialogue between tangible raw materials with the intangible emotions and ‘otherness’ she expresses in her ceramic forms. Penny’s sculptural technique is initially typically fast and often from memory to capture unedited feelings. However, any ambivalence to form in the making process is balanced out by expressive gesture in her pursuit of capturing emotion.

Drawings, prints and fibre artworks echo the visual language of Penny’s ceramic sculptures. Both her two dimensional as well as her sculptural work embrace the voice of the material as well as her own. Her work embodies an interconnection between the intentional and serendipity as well as the human and non-human realms.