Cees Penning
Originally from Rotterdam, Holland, Cees Penning graduated from the Graphic Academy in Amsterdam in the ’60s. Cees has been painting and drawing since he was in kindergarten and always used watercolors as his medium.
He worked in Holland and Germany as a photo-re-toucher till 1974, then moved to New York where he started his own one-man retouching business, having most of the major cosmetic companies as clients.
At the beginning of the ’90s, digital media began to infiltrate the field of retouching and completely took over a few years later. After 30 years in the industry, he adapted and expanded his creative palette with two new forms of art, oil painting, and cosmetic permanent makeup. He now works in the field of cosmetic permanent makeup with prominent plastic surgeons in Miami, Dallas, and New York. When he is home in Miami, Florida, he does oil paintings as much as possible.
With time on his hands, he started oil painting in 1998 without any former education, being completely self-taught. Because of his career as a photo-re-toucher, he creates a painting that looks as close as possible to photographs and calls it photo-realistic painting.
He enjoys a variety of different subjects for his paintings including portraits, nudes, exotic animals, and still-lifes. He challenges himself to work with high contrast between light and dark in his pieces.