About the piece:
Penelope lives in the Cotswolds and for many years worked as a textile designer in London/New York/Hong Kong/India. In the 1990’s she set up a textile design studio in Australia before returning to the UK in 2000 when she started working as a fine artist alongside her commercial work. Penel works in a variety of mediums, oil on canvas and mixed medium using acrylics, liquid graphite and watercolour pencil on paper building up layers of texture and drips to create detail in the work. Since January 2019 she has been concentrating on a body of work inspired by the endangered species of our planet with a percentage of sales of these artworks being donated to the relevant charities of the animals depicted, an ongoing project which she is excited to build on. Penel comments on “Flight of the Bumblebee” – “According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway, because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.” (Bee Movie). As bumblebees are so small, and their wings are moving so rapidly, the air acts like thick syrup allowing them to generate much more lift, debunking the theory that they should be incapable of flight! Two-thirds of the world’s crops depend on pollination and Bumblebees, among the most important pollinators, are in crisis.

At least 50% of the proceeds from this sale will support the charitable work of David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (DSWF) and our ground-based conservation partners across Africa and Asia.