P E N E L O P E    S T U T T E R H E I M E
(Previously known as Penny Stutterheim)

Click on the links below the thumbnails to view the full image with cataloguing
For more information on the artist, see below

Artist's Statement

A space to witness what lies within - the canvas becomes a container upon which potential evolves into actual, and a fabric that translates into palpable form, that cannot be touched. From feeling to image and an image that evokes feeling, the painting voices my process - a dialogue of application and response; a play of intention and being willed by the brush.

Layers develop - colour across colour - each shade shadowing the next, making a surface that implies something beneath; the depth and digging in being aware, and walking with oneself. Colour planes create an environment, be it landscape or form, defined by lines that hint at a boundary.

As I track my internal process, I etch into the planes of colour, making the lines that divide and bind, sinking into the unseen washes of what lies beneath. Out of this emerges form, now vistas of earth, and then figures of flesh. The images speak of me and through me, becoming a brail of the soul, and as such leading into an image I share in, I do not own, a rendering of a collective feeling that moves from being the object of view to the subject of onlooker.

The work reveals a slow unfolding, which continues still, of finding my voice, my dance, my melody. It is nourished by, intense feeling, emotion contained on a white canvas, to be felt, to be experienced, to be read from the place where no words yet lie.

Biography

My name is Penny Brent Stutterheime, previously known as Penny Stutterheim. I am a South African artist currently working in Cape Town. I am largely self-taught and have been painting for twenty two years. I have participated in group exhibitions and have sold through private galleries.

Private collectors and corporations have bought my works locally and internationally. These corporations include:-

Investec Bank
Nashua
Coronation Investment Holdings
Smacksoft
Cazenoves of London
Stanlib
Old Mutual

My primary medium is oil paint on canvas, utilising an impasto application. The subject matter has evolved through landscape, portraiture and still life to an abstract and esoteric form.

The work is highly symbolic drawing from dream images and the unconscious. Conveyed through colour and form the images are a representation of transformation. The viewer relates primarily to the work on an emotional level. These paintings are a portrayal of my own inner spiritual process.

Known for her dynamic landscapes - with their rich, vibrant colours and bold, expressionist brushstrokes - Penny Stutterheime is a young, up-and-coming artist whose work has been increasingly noticed in, group exhibitions.

Largely self-taught, she started painting seriously in her early twenties after making a decision not to pursue her first love, literature, as her career.

The daughter of a forester, she developed her intense love for landscape, as a result of her unusual experience of growing up in a forest. Later she was to benefit enormously from studying part-time with artists of the calibre of Simon Stone and the late Bill Ainslie, one of South Africa's finest abstractionists.

Her oil on canvas are to be seen in a great number of private collections, both locally and abroad, as well as in corporate collections, such as Investec and Nashua.