POTTERY AND FASHION lost to Pet Por­trait Paint­ings…
Young Penny Whad­coat showed great tal­ent as a Pet Por­trait artist from an early age. The ques­tion was which of her tal­ents would she even­tu­ally fol­low as a career path because she was equally skilled as a Pet Por­trait Painter, pot­ter and as a dress­maker and designer?

“When I was young I hoped to be a dress designer.” Penny said.
“But I was not able to enroll on the degree course I wanted. The pot­tery course was also full so I fin­ished up on the art course and have been mak­ing a liv­ing ever since.”

Penny Whad­coat mar­ried John in 1989 and became Penny Richard­son,
one of the lead­ing artists in the East Mid­lands and United King­dom, who is best known for her Pet Por­trait Paint­ings.
She has been mar­ried to her hus­band, John Richard­son, for twenty three years and the cou­ple have five chil­dren.
They both met when they enrolled onto the same life sav­ing course at Oakham School swim­ming pool, in 1988.
They now work together in a fam­ily busi­ness from their home in Exton. Penny takes care of the paint­ing and the sales and mar­ket­ing, while John does Pic­ture Fram­ing & Pho­tog­ra­phy, builds and man­ages the web­sites, print­ing and publishing.

Penny Whad­coat came from a very well known farm­ing fam­ily.
Penny grew up at North­field Farm near Cold Over­ton, she is a great great grand daugh­ter, (on her fathers’ side) of the famous John Player from Not­ting­ham. Dur­ing Pen­nys’ youth the farm was mixed arable and sheep, later the farm also included poul­try.
Penny inher­ited her tal­ent for art from her mother and moth­ers’ par­ents and grand­par­ents, but Pen­nys’ mother died when she was 13 years old, from mul­ti­ple sclerosis.

Penny was a pupil at the Mor­cott Hall School for Girls, where she came under the guid­ance of a well known Rut­land artist and art teacher John Wal­ton — who had for­mally been a mas­ter at Oakham School.
Under his guid­ance she devel­oped her skills and tal­ent. After leav­ing Mor­cott Hall School, she attended Rut­land Col­lege and then enrolled in a foun­da­tion course at Lough­bor­ough Art Col­lege. At that time, she wanted to be a fash­ion designer and was already a tal­ented dressmaker.

She said: “I had already designed a jacket with remov­able zip up sleeves but couldn’t get on the fash­ion designer course.“
“A year later a jacket with remov­able zip up sleeves was on sale in the shops and I always believe some­one else had stolen my idea.”

Penny today uses her sewing knowl­edge in the form of mak­ing cos­tumes for school plays, and fancy dress sit­u­a­tions that occa­sion­ally arise.  She says, “I made my own wed­ding dress and would make wed­ding dresses for my two daugh­ters if they asked me to one day”. Penny’s love for pot­tery has been put aside, as she con­cen­trated on her paint­ings of ani­mals. She paints her Pet Por­traits from pho­tographs. Penny paints dogs, cats, horses and por­traits of chil­dren and peo­ple. Penny and John have three sons and two daugh­ters, Joseph the eldest, Judith, Ilana, Eli­jah and Jacob.
Penny’s love of art has def­i­nitely passed on to her chil­dren. Today Penny gets orders for her paint­ings from all over the UK and has increas­ing inter­est in her work from USA and Canada.
ARTICLE ORIGINALLY WRITTEN FOR THE RUTLAND MESSENGER.