Penelope Hyde Levine

23 Hook Road, Rhinebeck 12572 | Stairs
penelope.levine@gmail.com | @penelopehydelevine

I work in clay, encaustics and watercolor. I also write poetry and have set poems into soundscapes.  Each medium seems to engage a different part of me.  Making functional pots most engages the body. The gesture of a handle or spout, the belly of a pot, the curve of a bowl are expressive in how they evoke arm, mouth, torso.  They delight in their physical object-ness. People will touch and use them—the pots will wend their way into the user’s daily life.

I glaze and fire my work at Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild using their rich cone 10 reduction glazes.  To decorate and glaze the pots feels like dressing them.  I search for images I can adapt and use from fabric, nature, a bottle of salsa and from other ceramics.  Many animals appear in my work.  They feel like gifts, often arriving from my fingers before I know who they are—like the sudden appearance of a bobcat walking through the yard or a heron floating across the road.

The encaustic and watercolor paintings also are physical but instead of objects they feel like places.  The color in the paintings suggests light, and as such: time, a particular moment. Often I work in layers which cover, then reveal, build a history. I am happy with a painting when it feels like I could wander within it endlessly. I do not know what a painting will look like before starting. My process seeks to find what the canvas calls itself into being.  It is a continual act of discovery as I watch the painting’s development.