Niki Pennington’s artistic practice explores the balance between analogue and digital, chaos and calm. Blending abstraction with representation, she creates layered compositions that explore the emotional and sensory connections between memory, place, and lived experience. Through gestural mark-making and structured forms, her paintings transform fleeting moments into lasting impressions, blurring the boundaries between reality and recollection. Her work invites viewers to reflect on the shifting nature of remembered experience.

Born in England in 1971, Niki is the daughter of internationally recognised New Zealand industrial designer Mark Pennington and visual artist Suzy Pennington. She studied Visual Communication at Wellington Polytechnic School of Design before beginning her career in Wellington. After completed an MFA at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel, Switzerland, she worked in branding, innovation, and design in London before joining the Arnell Group in New York.

Returning to New Zealand in 2006, she co-founded the design consultancy The Penningtons with her brother, Michael. Since 2020, Pennington has painted full-time from Twin Island Gallery, her studio and gallery in Eastbourne.

In 2024, she received the Curator’s Award from the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts for Safe Harbour. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in private collections worldwide.