Pastoral Ornaments: An Exhibition by Pauline Gutter

9 February – 30 March 2025 at Glen Carlou Gallery, Glen Carlou Vineyards, Simondium Road, Stellenbosch

Award-winning artist Pauline Gutter‘s new exhibition “Pastoral Ornaments” can currently be viewed at Glen Carlou wine estate, near Stellenbosch. The exhibition encompasses a travel- journal offering of first-hand life experiences. According to Gutter, the exhibition can be divided into a few significant chapters:

The SAFFCA artist-residency at Lion Sands:
In Winter 2024, the renowned artist, Pauline Gutter, completed the MORE Family Collection Artist Residency which is arranged in partnership with the Southern African Foundation for Contemporary Art (SAFFCA).

There she immersed herself for 5 weeks in a natural reserve that surrounds the Lion Sands Ivory Lodge, reveling in the opportunity to observe the local wildlife. During her residency she studied animals through portraiture, capturing their distinctive characteristics primarily in charcoal drawings.

Specific scenes crossed her path during daily sightseeing tours, one of which was the intense wrangling and showcasing of bravado between two Nyala bulls. The opponents surveyed each other with intense concentration: their backs tightened like arches, hairs on end, heads leaning forward with strong stretched legs.

Another memorable experience was witnessing a male leopard, quietly and calculatedly waiting for the slightest movement of ’n curled-up pangolin to step out of its protective position. While this play between hunter and prey was unfolding, an opportunistic hyena arrived and tried to lure the leopard’s prey away. The leopard, initially resting, rose gracefully and unexpectedly transitioned into unmatched action. To avoid conflict with one of the Big Five, the hyena scurried away.

A troop of migrating buffalos moving across the plains is also strikingly immortalized by Pauline.

After the residency, her kinship with bovine species naturally focused her attention on a herd of 800 migrating African buffalo – a large sub-Saharan African bovine. She elaborates on her encounter “the herd appeared to be moving like a singular organism, stamping out a path through the grass with its constant rustling through the Bushveld”. This inspired Gutter to paint the diptych “Before the Stampede.”

Also notable is one stone lithography printed at the University of the Free State: Jackalberry & Shangaan. This enormous Jackalberry, which greets tourists at the entrance to Lion Sands, is estimated to be about 800 years old. That work was created with free movement and in a mirror image of the original subject. The end result was thus very unpredictable; the final depiction only visible when the first pressure of the stone is subtracted.

Through her creative journey as an artist, there has always been a strong connection to the tradition of portrait creation. For Gutter, it’s important that her work captures the essence of the presenting personalities, whether human or animal. The uniqueness of each character and the rhythm in which life experience drives must be experienced by the viewer. During the artist’s stay at Lion Sands, she realized that each animal’s unique characteristics and manner of being, as those of humans, differ. A good example of this is to be detected in her portrait of ’n leopard female named ‘Rocky Ridge’. One of the female’s most striking characteristics is her fine build and giant eyes. This work was built up from several charcoal layers of handmade pigment pastels and later ink was added to allow the spots and the fur to vibrate.

The giant (majestic) baboon:
The portrait of a giant male baboon-titled, Soul of the Ape, named after the book by Eugene Marais, flowed spontaneously from the creative subconscious and then is also the very last work in the series Gutter completed before her departure for the South. The painting is a metaphor for the current circumstances of the world we live in: It imagines the powerless silent cry of nature versus the selfish utterances by individuals who continue to make laws that disturb the equilibrium and balance even further.

The Drakensberg forests:
Waterfalls and Forests. Rhythmic movements of shadows and mossy microwoods. Layered vision and a voyage of discovery.

Gutter would like to acknowledge and warmly thank SAFFCA and the MORE Family Collection, for the opportunity to have experienced this remarkable landscape and to have had the privilege to transform these extraordinary encounters into her art. The charcoal works were created at the Ivory Lodge studio/gallery. The oil paintings, which later flowed from them, were painted at Gutter’s studio on the banks of the Taaiboschsspruit. All a reflection of the earthy ochre colors of the protected biomes she likes to study.

Pastoral Ornaments feature 74 works in total, and the collection is currently being exhibited at Glen Carlou Gallery, near Stellenbosch, until 30 March. It is being featured in the main gallery, alongside Prof. Janine Allen’s New World and Keagan Larkin’s Conflict and Currency. Enquiries: Christa Swart gallery@glencarlou.co.za

View the works in the virtual gallery here: https://storage.net-fs.com/hosting/6204981/32/

Instagram: @paulinegutter