Quick Take
Veteran Santa Cruz painter Ed Penniman is the man of the moment at Santa Cruz City Hall, which will hang one of his paintings to be unveiled at a reception Wednesday. Penniman will also curate an ongoing show showcasing artists who used their art as a means to heal from physical or psychological trauma, something Penniman knows a lot about.
Before his death last year shortly after turning 100, the celebrated painter Richard Mayhew was widely thought of as perhaps Santa Cruz County’s greatest living visual artist. Now that that particular mantle is up for grabs; it might be Ed Penniman’s moment to seize it.
Penniman, 82, was a student and deep admirer of Mayhew and his landscapes that seemed to shimmer with consciousness. With his own style of landscape painting, Penniman is a worthy successor. But unlike his mentor, Penniman’s local roots go back generations.
On top of all that, his life provides a stirring and triumphant example of pushing through impediments that serves as an example for everyone – artist or otherwise.
In other words, if you’re going to bring in a painting to occupy a prominent spot at Santa Cruz City Hall, it might as well be Ed Penniman’s.
On Wednesday, Penniman will be the man of the hour at a reception at the city hall council chambers, where he will officially donate his painting “Natural Bridges State Park” to the city.
“I’m going to talk about my journey,” said Penniman of the reception Wednesday at 5 p.m., “how my art evolved, and how my art served as a healing aspect for me.”
Penniman is the grandson of Leonora Naylor Penniman, a prominent California landscape painter in the early 20th century and one of the co-founders of the Santa Cruz Art League. Young Eddie followed in his grandmother’s artistic footsteps as an artist, even attending Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles.
But in 1984, at the age of 42, Penniman, having built a career as a graphic artist in Silicon Valley, was suddenly struck with a terrifying condition that left him for a time completely paralyzed. He was soon diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a crippling neurological disorder. It took seven years for him in physical rehab to regain his basic motor skills. During that time, he turned to art as a means to cope and to find meaning in his suffering, even though he could, at first, only hold a paint brush in his teeth.
Over the course of many years, Penniman gradually regained his ability to paint, to walk and to function in his daily life, though the disease left him permanently disabled.
“My ability to paint is pretty good right now,” he said. “I’m just going through the typical aging things. But I’m taking care of myself, I’m trying to eat right and exercise as much as I can. But mentally, I think I’m probably better than I’ve ever been.”
He’s fine enough, in fact, to talk about bigger projects, including talking to the city about a rotating art show at city hall focusing on the work of other artists who have had to overcome serious disease or disability.
“We’ll have an exhibition coming up,” said Penniman, who is also a curator at the Santa Cruz Art League, “in which we’ll contact individuals who have used art in the process of their physical and psychological healing.”
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