PENELOPE STUTTERHEIME
(b. 1958 Cape Town, South Africa)
Depicting inner landscapes has long been South African artist Penelope Stutterheime’s preoccupation. Drawing inspiration from dreams and the unconscious, her layered and textured oil paintings use impasto and intensely vibrant colour to create mesmerising abstract works.
Conveyed through hue and form, the images are a representation of transformation. Her paintings are a portrayal of her own inner spiritual processes, while also interrogating universal consciousness.
The artist explains:
The work reveals a slow unfolding, and a weaving together of states of being. Daniel C. Wahl wrote that “weavers are healers of the unbroken whole – connecting people and place in elegant tapestries of shared meaning and visions of a world that works for all.” My practice engages actively with layering the literal passage of time and formal artistic considerations onto one symbolic surface. The choice of colours represents my own mindscape; in turn I hope to reflect on larger considerations, offering a reconnection and weaving together of humanity’s mindfulness and beyond.
Stutterheime developed her intense love for landscape as a child growing up on the edge of Newlands Forest in Cape Town. She studied part-time with the artist Simon Stone and the late Bill Ainslie, one of South Africa’s finest abstractionists, but aside from this is largely self-taught. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions consistently over the past thirty years, and her paintings are included in private and corporate collections around the world. She is based in Cape Town.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2026 Solace, Everard Read, London, UK
2025 Weaving, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2023 Hearth, Everard Read, London, UK
2022 Sanctuary, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2019 Mapping the Interior, Everard Read, London, UK
Mapping, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2017 Merging, Everard Read, London, UK
2012 Love Poem, Myerson Fine Art, London, UK
2011 Exhale, Myerson Fine Art, London, UK
2010 New Works, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2007 iArt, Cape Town, South Africa
2005 Myerson Fine Art, London, UK
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 10 Years | Summer Show, Everard Read, London, UK
Matter Matters | Artists & Their Media, Everard Read, London, UK
2024 Inner Sanctum, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa
Winter 24/25, Everard Read, London, UK
2023 What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa
2022 Spring, group show, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa
2021 Oasis, Everard Read, UK and South Africa
Spring Show, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa
Transitory Terrain, Everard Read, London, UK
2020 Still, online exhibition, Everard Read, UK and South Africa
Staring Straight to the Future, online exhibition, Everard Read, UK and South Africa
2019 Southern Aspect, Everard Read, London, UK
Winter, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2018 Summer, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2017 Winter Collection, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2017 Cubicle Series, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2016 Opening Gallery Exhibition, CIRCA London, London, UK
2015 The Yearning, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2015 Summer Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Winter Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2013 A Sense of Place, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2012 Winter Show, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Small Works, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2011 15th Anniversary, group show, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2010 Rose Korber Art Salon, Cape Town, South Africa
2009 Rising Up, Myerson Fine Art, London, UK
2008 A Way Through, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2005 Art London with Myerson Fine Art
2000-07 Rose Korber Art Salon, Cape Town, South Africa
2005&06 Group exhibitions with Rose Korber at Grande Provence, Franschhoek, South Africa
2001 Group show, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
