Penny was born the son of a doctor in Elim, South Africa. His parents were missionaries who moved their family to Hay River on Great Slave Lake in 1962. He was 10.
Evan Penny was born a Canadian citizen in South Africa in 1953.

Penny began his studies at Alberta College of Art, graduating with honors in 1975 and returning to his alma mater to study post-graduate sculpture. Utilizing molding techniques for silicone primarily used for movie props, Penny creates hyper-realistic sculptures of mainly head-and-shoulders bodies on a larger than life scale. Through the painstaking addition of scars, blemishes and other imperfections of the body, he investigates human fallibility within his sculptures.

The artist currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

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Evan Penny makes the kind of sculpture that is so realistic, so detailed, and so obviously a display of skill that it literally stops people in their tracks. But this alone isn't why the artist's work grabs the viewer."