Penelope Brook is a New Zealand-born, Oxford-based artist whose abstract, mixed-media works are born of her habit of meandering walks, and her love of nature’s small and unexpected beauties. She is particularly interested in lichens, mosses and fungi: the way they soften a gravestone or a log pile; the way they charge the grey of stone, the grey of winter with improbable and seductive colour; their persistence; their vulnerability to our disregard. She describes her work as both a way of holding and sharing the joy of slow, quiet observation, and as an invitation to care – believing in the fierce power of love and wonder in sustaining activism to sustain biodiversity.

Penelope holds an MA in textiles from the Royal College of Art (2023). She has exhibited in the UK and Europe, including as a Will Gompertz selection at the 2024 ING Discerning Eye exhibition, and in the exhibition “Material Interest” at the Irving Gallery (July-August 2025). Her work continues to be inspired by her earlier residency at Cove Park in the winter of 2024.