C-ART is fast approaching.

This year, highly regarded Eden Arts' countywide open studio trail takes place from September 12-27, with more than 110 artists, designers and galleries flinging open their creative doors to the public with numerous art and craft workshops, demonstrations and special exhibitions taking place.

Among those taking part will be David Penn, doing an artistic 'meet and greet' at Artspace26a, an exciting new studio/gallery he's created with fellow artist Pam Williamson within Kendal's shining cultural gem, The Factory, on Aynam Road.

During C-Art, David and Pam will be joined in their 'hub gallery' by eight other artists - Lynda Gray, Nancy Gray, Joy Grindrod, Marion Kuit, Pavlina Martin, Evelyn Sinclair, Sally Toms and Karen Wilkinson, and link with Factory colleagues, Jo Vincent and Rebecca Callis.

For several years David shared Mill Yard Studios at Staveley with Pam, building up a loyal following: "We grew out of the studio," says David. "And when the chance came to create our own space at The Factory, I leapt at it."

"Starting almost from scratch, we’ve been able to make a remarkable space which provides room for us and associated artists to work, to run workshops and classes, to offer opportunities for ‘hot-easelling,’and to host events."

Apparently, one recent visitor remarked: "You’d expect to find this in London - but not in Kendal."

David was born in the Wirral, and brought up all over the north of England. His father was a curate in Bowdon, south of Manchester, then in Alston, Cumbria, before being a vicar in North Yorkshire.

"Visual art was all round me from day one," he continues. "My grandfather, in whose house I spent my first years, was a noted portrait painter and vice-principal of Liverpool College of Art.

"His large studio was at the back of the house I was brought up in, so I grew up with the sights, sounds and smells of oil painting and sat in my playpen with a full size drawing board and a lump of charcoal from a very early age.

"Later he taught me more formally, above all to draw. For him drawing was more important than anything. From then on many of my influences have come from happy encounters with poets, painters, dancers, musicians, some of whom were or have since become eminent in their own fields. Working with many of them or simply talking over shared meals, has helped to shape the way I see the arts, to refine my taste and explains why some people think I’m a bit high brow."

After university, David worked briefly in market research in Switzerland and was offered a permanent and very lucrative job with a leading firm. However, he says his social conscience took over and he saw teaching as a way of "giving back."

"I’m not sure that I set out to do it for 30 years but it opened up a fascinating and varied career, in the classroom, as an adviser, a bit of broadcasting with BBC Radio Merseyside, research and writing a book on the arts in education, a dozen years as a secondary head and chairing a national education/arts organisation.

"Although I was drawing and writing all the time, I needed more time to develop my own work properly. So I asked to be allowed to retire early.

"One of my daughters was horrified by the thought that I might vegetate and sent me a clip from the Guardian advertising a job in Grizedale.

"I didn’t realise when I took it on, how close the Grizedale Arts project, which had thrived so well in its earlier years, was to disaster. The theatre had lost its audience and its Arts Council funding and the sculpture programme was under threat too. With the support some excellent staff and some loyal trustees, I spent a hard year making very difficult decisions. The hardest was to close the theatre. Needing upwards of £100,000 to bring it up to an acceptable health and safety standard, with no grant from the Arts Council and having lost its audience to old age or the newer venues that had sprung up all around, there was only one decision that could sensibly be made but that didn’t make it a popular one.

"However, we threw everything into reinforcing the visual arts programme and I’m pleased that lives on 15 or more years later, in the form of both the internationally recognised Grizedale Arts and a very successful sculpture programme run by the Forestry Commission.

"I was asked to stay on to run it all, but I thought others could do it better, and anyway, I wanted more than ever some time to do my own thing."

Post Grizedale, David took on a series of consultancy projects working with a variety of arts organisations, one of which was with the eminent engineers on the imagination - Welfare State International.

"I’d known John and Sue Fox since I was 18 and had great respect for them as extraordinary and inspirational community artists. Their latest project was the creation of Lanternhouse in Ulverston, one of the first major Arts Lottery projects. An essentially nomadic company suddenly found themselves with a remarkable but very expensive building. What should have been a great resource felt more like a millstone. All building-based arts companies are under great pressure; many have gone to the wall. The Arts Council, understandably, wants to fund activity, not buildings. And although we put up a good fight for seven or eight years, we simply hadn’t got the resources to sustain a substantial enough programme, and we had to bow to the inevitable.

"But it’s important to remember that the work of Welfare State lives on in the myriad companies all over the country and indeed the world, who were inspired by and learned from a seminal company."

David's own creativity has taken him in many directions: "I’ve been commissioned to do designs for dance and music performances by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and Halle Orchestra. I’ve painted murals, for instance at the Lakeland Motor Museum. And I’ve collaborated on installations and community events.

"But my most serious work concerns exploring the spirit of places, large paintings that relate to specify places, times and histories. They include two major series to date, one about places in India, another about the Falklands. The latter project was part funded by the Arts Council. Many of these have been seen in solo exhibitions at the Brewery and at the Lichfield Festival. I’m currently trying to do some stuff about Cyprus where I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the last couple of years.

"I also enjoy landscape and life drawing, probably because of their immediate challenges and the need for close observation of difficult subjects.

"I don’t look for fame or fortune but I do appreciate the recognition of some very discerning people who like and buy my work and enjoy looking at it every day. In the end, it’s most important to produce work that is honest, that says something, that challenges me and the viewer. I’m not interested in superficial, decorative stuff, however skilled it may be."

Artspace26a will be open during C-Art, Wednesdays to Sundays, 10am-4pm.