This week Demetra Penner’s in Winnipeg, next week she could be in Churchill. This year she’s concentrating on her music, next year it could be her painting. Not knowing for sure doesn’t phase her.

“You’ve got to be present,” the petite 24-year-old said over drinks on a Corydon patio last week.

It’s that attitude that’s brought Penner to places like Thailand, Nepal, the Arctic Circle, Costa Rica and Guatemala. She’s a certified yoga instructor and self-taught visual artist whose paintings have hung in Vienna, Barcelona and New York.

Somehow, in between all of that, she’s managed to become a sought-after singer-songwriter whose beautiful, dramatic voice and spacious folk songs have been showcased at the Winnipeg Folk Festival twice as part of the young performers program.

This Saturday, Sept. 26, she’ll play a show in Winnipeg – something that’s rare because of her self-professed “lack of knowledge about how to promote myself.”

“I’m not good at throwing myself in people’s faces,” Penner said. “People come to me [to arrange shows] and when they do, I’m very grateful. Plus, it’s hard to play a lot of shows when you travel.”

But it’s because she travels that she’s developed her singing and songwriting over the past four years. Growing up on a farm near Altona, Man., Penner was a prolific painter in high school who dabbled in music at the occasional coffeehouse.

When she began traveling, music became her medium of choice simply because she could write songs wherever she was – much easier than tracking down paints and a canvas.

 

 

“ Life is really short. I didn’t want to wait years and years and years to make a big, fancy album.

Demetra Penner, musician

In 2007 she went into MCM Studio with her friends Darryl Neustaedter Barg, Paul Bergman and Karl Redding to record some songs for posterity. In one evening she ended up recording six songs, which she turned into her debut EP.

“It was more just to put [the songs] down to have something tangible and to share it,” Penner said. “Life is really short. I didn’t want to wait years and years and years to make a big, fancy album.”

Since then, Penner’s managed to sell nearly all 500 copies of the EP. She’s taken part in Mike Petkau’s Record of the Week Club and is currently writing songs with Matt Peters of The Waking Eyes.

If she manages to settle in Winnipeg for more than six months, she hopes to make another CD and then tour Canada.

“I consider art and music my own language and no one can tell me how to express it,” she said. “I don’t really follow the rules or script. I just do.”

Published in Volume 64, Number 4 of The Uniter (September 24, 2009)