Art exhibition focuses on bicycles

By Cindy Landrum  

MARCH 1, 2012 11:49 a.m. (0)

Although historians disagree when the first modern day bicycle was invented, there’s no debate that with the human-powered mode of transportation came freedom.

And the bicycle has meant artistic freedom to Greenville painter Teri Pena.

“There’s such a freedom to the bicycle,” she said. “What made the bicycle such an amazing product is that it knows no age.”

An exhibit of bicycle-related paintings by Pena, “The Bicycle: The World’s Greatest Toy,” opens Friday at Art & Light Gallery on Pendleton Street in the Far West End.

For most of the 16 years Pena has lived in Greenville, she’s been known for her large oil landscapes.

But for the past year and a half, Pena, one of the original artists who started ArtBomb on Pendleton Street, has moved toward more figurative painting.

“When I was in school, we thought if we could master the human form, we could do anything,” she said. “It’s an amazing feat to understand the human body and form.”

But Pena didn’t just want to paint images of people. She wanted to paint people doing the things that makes them tick, she said.

When she began scouring the Internet for images she could use for inspiration, she came across several that included bicycles, a mode of transportation Pena was very familiar with from the days she used to compete in triathlons. She still rides a bike for pleasure.

“When the bicycle started more than a century ago, it transported people from place to place. It was a human-powered vehicle,” she said. “But even with the advent of other means of transportation, the bicycle remains popular just because of the pleasure people get just being on a bike.

“You can be 60 or 70 years old and get on a bike and still feel like a kid.”

The group of paintings that will be shown at Art & Light were inspired by a quote Pena read by Albert Einstein, “I thought of it while I was riding my bike” about his theory of relativity.

Soon, Pena was exploring the importance of the bicycle across time through old photographs and quotes.

One quote Pena read said the bicycle was one of the things that allowed women to not have to wear dresses. Susan B. Anthony, a pioneer in women’s rights, said the bicycle “did the most to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”

Einstein also said, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”

“That is so true,” Pena said.

Pena also agrees with a quote by Ernest Hemmingway that said a bike is the best way to see and remember a country.

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle,” the author said.

Pena said she could understand why the bicycle has been so treasured over the years.

“I absolutely love to ride a bike. There’s such a freedom to it,” she said. “If you’ve ever toured Charleston on a bike you know what I mean. It’s so amazing. You forget the every day grind.”

Pena said she doesn’t know where her latest journey with bikes – and the human form – will take her.

“I have no idea where it will lead me or what it will turn into,” she said.

The show will run through March.