About the Artist

Penny Ross was born in Cincinnati and educated in the public schools. Her first paintings were of the Ohio River and the streets in Mt. Adams. In 1965 she moved with her husband to the region of the upper Delaware River and the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania where she has made her home. Vacations have been in the Mohonk Preserve and Maine coast. Her subject has focused on this landscape. She paints en plein air until winter. Then her work is predominantly interiors, Still lifes with flowers, or a view from her window.

She paints the structure of what she sees, the color, shape and spatial relationships. She tells about the landscape and her experience of the place through her aesthetics and artistic imagination. Her tools are lines, values, textures, light and colors and these abstract elements are as important as her response to the place. The place caught her desire to paint it by an emotional response to the light on the subject. 

Penny Ross received her BFA and BS in Ed from the University of Cincinnati and her MA from New York University. Two awards that she was honored with are these:  The Pocono Arts Council bought one of her paintings to hang permanently in their gallery. She was the second artist to become part of their new collection, “the Hall of Fame”. And the Delaware Water Gap Celebration of the Arts, COTA, presented her with the Stirling and Dorothy Strauser Award for her contribution to the arts and to the community. She is in the Berman Museum at Ursinus College, the William Penn Museum in Harrisburg, the Everhart Museum in Scranton as well as many other public and private collections.