Art & The Animal Kingdom

DAYTON - Jackie Penner believes God put her on earth to care for the animals that cross her path. A few years ago, Penner adopted a newborn starling and taught it to whistle Yankee Doodle Dandy. The starling also learned to say "be nice" just before it stopped coming back to the farm. She cried when it didn't return.

"Imagine that," she says. "Sixty years old and I'm bawling because my bird is gone."

Animals are one of Penner's two biggest passions. The other is art. Painting is where she brings them together.

Penner, 63, began her artistic journey drawing as a child. Her girlfriend's mother, Vivian McCauley (Eslick) was an artist. McCauley informally gave drawing lessons to Penner as a child. But she didn't start painting until after she married in 1966. Later, she enrolled at the Katchina School of Art in Phoenix, Ariz.

The Dayton High School graduate's artwork will be featured at the Wenaha Gallery through July 25. The gallery will host an artist reception Saturday, July 16, from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Jackie married her Dayton High sweetheart, Jay Penner, when she was 18. He was 20.

"How that ever worked out, I don't know," Penner says. "We're both very strong personalities."

She says they've both changed a lot, but they work well together. Penner is the book- keeper at the farm and her husband takes care of the land. He's spontaneous and doesn't plan. She loves logic and details. The duo's differences complement each other, according to Penner.

"I'm very, very detailed," she says, "all my life people have been saying, 'loosen up, you need to loosen up.' But I got to a certain age and thought, 'I'm going to do what I like to do, which is detail.'"

Penner indulges in the details, both in life and in painting. It's what she enjoys. She holds up a proportional divider and says it's the greatest tool she's ever discovered. She measures all the distances: from the bear's paw to his shoulder, from the cowboy's elbow to ear. For Penner, it's all in the details.

Penner paints her intimate depictions of Belgian horses, bears and other animals in the stillness of her Pump Studio, built on the foundation of an old pump house. She chooses not to paint her own animals- she's afraid that she won't get them right and she loves them too much to paint them wrong.

Why animals?

"I was always better with animals, than I am with people," she says.

To paint sellable, commercial paintings, Penner says she would need to do more landscapes. She sighs and says, "I am so cruddy about landscape."

Almost all of Penner's paintings are based on photographs. Once, at a wildlife workshop, she tried painting outside.

"I could have thrown up on the canvas and done a better job," she says, and laughs.

She does most of her painting in the winter, because she and her husband are busy with the farm in the summertime. Still, she loves the farm, and prefers to stay and work with her husband, rather than going on the road with her art.

Despite that inclination, Penner has traveled for her art. She has taken workshops with well-known wildlife painters including John Banovich, Terry Isaac, Daniel Smith and Paco Young. Penner isn't shy-when she meets an artist she admires, she's not afraid to ask for tips or help. Neither is she easily deterred. Penner went to a workshop in Canada with John Seerey-Lester with a knee cart and a cast on her recently broken leg.

Art is like God, she says, both are an unpredictable, guiding force in her life. Penner, a member of the Methodist Church of Dayton, values her beliefs above most else. She did not grow up in a religious family but found her faith through her life's experiences and her artwork only strengthens that faith.

"It's amazing how the artwork takes you where you're to go," she says. "I will work on a painting; I will try this and try that, and it just takes you off in this other direction. You think, 'Oh, that wasn't what I planned, but I like that.' It just kind of goes its own way. I gave in to that."

She has been all over North America to attend workshops and go to shows. Her art has been shown in Boise, Dubois, Chicago and elsewhere. Penner has also served as ad director and president of Women Artists of the West, an organization of around 200 professional female artists.

"My art has taken me on a journey that I never dreamed possible," she says .

When the journey becomes wearisome, she keeps her faith.

"Faith is what keeps you going when nothing else is there," she says. "When you take time to pray, it stills your mind, and it gives you time to get rid of the emotion, and have the faith that the answer that comes to you will be the correct one."

Faith, she says, has made her more compassionate towards other beings. The stillness and compassion she has developed through her faith shows in the lifelike detail of her paintings.

In the end, Penner says she paints to give others joy .

"I've had fellow artists that say, 'I don't know if I want to keep painting.' And I say, 'Do you realize the joy that you're keeping from those people that absolutely adore your work?"

For Penner, bringing joy to others through her passion is the most satisfying.

"When someone says, 'I really like your work,' that's the greatest joy I get. That's what it's all about," she says.