Spirits of the Sea: Crossing the Horizon: Anne Penman Sweet

‘I want the tanker paintings to be overwhelming and overpowering, to bear down on the viewer who is dwarfed and awed by their presence, echoing the way we are dwarfed and awed by the vastness of the night skies – the stars and galaxies.’ – Anne Penman Sweet

Anne Penman Sweet’s paintings of large ships are imbued with both power and poetry. Through her exquisite paintwork, Sweet sheds new light on what might – at first - be perceived as a mundane, even brutal, subject. Most of us only ever see tankers as tiny figures on the horizon and are barely aware of their existence despite their role as the driving force behind the world economy. Sweet’s paintings give these magnificent crafts a true sense of majesty -- even divinity. Each painting is given a title derived from the gods of classical mythology.

Anne Penman Sweet has achieved an international reputation over the last twenty years. British-born but now living and working in Australia, she was a finalist in the Celeste Art Prize in 2006 (UK), the Salon des Refuses at the S.H Ervin Gallery in 2013 and the Paddington Art Prize in 2014. She has had twelve solo shows and participated in forty group shows around the world, and has works in both significant private and corporate collections.