“Bold Color: Acrylic Paintings by Virgil Penner” is now in the Regier Art Gallery in Luyken Fine Arts Center at Bethel College, through Oct. 20, with the reception Friday, Oct. 13, from 6-8 p.m.
The show’s reception will be Friday, Oct. 13, from 6-8 p.m. at the gallery.
Regular gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday 2-4 p.m., with extended hours of Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., during Fall Fest. There is no admission charge.
Over a long career of teaching, coaching and working with people, Virgil Penner didn’t forget about his art.
Penner, who now lives in North Newton, is a lifelong Newton resident. He attended Lincoln School and then a rural one-room school east of Newton when his family moved to a farm, before graduating from Newton High School.
At NHS, he studied art with Marie Orr for four years. He graduated from Bethel College with a degree in industrial arts and later completed a master’s degree in education from Wichita State University.
After working for three years as an industrial therapist in a mental hospital in Indianapolis, Penner returned to
Kansas. He taught and coached at Bethel from 1964-71, then spent 12 years teaching and coaching at Wichita North, West and Heights high schools.
From 1983-2000, he was back at Bethel as alumni director and annual fund director, and he closed out his working life as CEO of the Newton Chamber of Commerce, retiring in 2009.
Penner had been known for his ink drawings of homes and buildings, with detailed architectural perspective. Since retiring, he has focused on acrylic landscape paintings.
Since 2009, he has created hundreds of paintings and sold most of them by way of galleries and art festivals in the region. He ships paintings nationwide to collectors and others through his website (virgilapennerart.com).
His paintings are known for being bright and colorful. He creates from memory rather than “on location” or from photographs.
By doing this, he says, he feels he can develop balance and movement in his paintings.
Bethel is a four-year liberal arts college founded in 1887 and is the oldest Mennonite college in North America. Bethel was the first Kansas college or university to be named a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Center, in 2021. For more information, see www.bethelks.edu
