PRESS RELEASE
PENELOPE STUTTERHEIME | A Way Through
Sep 11 – Oct 3, 2026
PENELOPE STUTTERHEIME | A Way Through
11 September - 3 October 2026
Everard Read Franschhoek
20 Huguenot Road
For Stutterheime, painting has long been a way of giving form to the interior landscape: a means of exploring the shifting terrain of memory, emotions and consciousness. A Way Through continues this deeply personal enquiry, presenting a body of work that can be understood as a distillation of inner landscapes.
The title suggests both a forward momentum as well as possibility. We move through life along varying shifting paths of our own, but also those that are shared with others. Some paths diverge while others intersect and become woven into the fabric of who we are, transforming us as we go.
For Stutterheime, painting becomes a way of processing these continuous and inevitable shifts. Her process remains highly intuitive and physical. Oil paint is repeatedly applied, built up and worked into the surface, each new layer recording the passage of time. The accumulated marks intricately weave together light and colour; traces of what has been experienced remain beneath, each new layer already forming what comes next. There is, in this layering, an acknowledgement that we are continually transforming. Each experience adds another layer to our interior landscape. Grief, love, sadness, joy and loss leave their traces, altering the shape of what remains, but what we carry forward is never quite the same as what we started with.
In this sense, A Way Through is concerned with resilience - not as a fixed state, but as an ongoing process of adaptation and evolution of self. Stutterheime’s paintings hold the evidence of this movement: the building and breaking down of surfaces, the tension between control and release, and the emergence of something new through the accumulation of layers.
The works thus become both record and refuge - containers for memories and spaces of retreat. They speak to the human capacity to find a way through this existence, always carrying what has shaped us while we continue to transform indefinitely.
EVERARD READ FRANSCHHOEK
20 Huguenot Road, Franschhoek, 7690
+27 21 876 2446 l fgallery@everard.co.za
Monday – Sunday | 09:30 - 16:00
If you are looking to add to your collection and you are unable to make it to our gallery during operating hours, please contact us via fgallery@everard.co.za to make an appointment outside of these hours.
