Tangled Resonance
I am flipping through the pages of a Rembrandt monograph when I see A Woman Bathing in a Stream (Hendrickje Stoffels?). [1] Immediately, I am transported into the dimly lit space of the painting. Cool water laps at my legs as, in a moment of solitude, I step into the water and hold my dress above my knees.
I recall other bodies of water I have entered, and I am taken to the garden of my childhood - a sprawling secret garden through which snaked a free-flowing creek[2]. The garden is filled with towering trees, blossoming shrubs, stone walls, and mossy pathways. Moving my body through the water at its heart is like traversing through a living, breathing artwork, full of browns and greens and as wet and slippery as fresh paint.
Back in my studio now, I look to the paintings that line the walls and I feel I can step into these spaces too - as though they are private worlds of their own. These paintings comprise this exhibition, Tangled Resonance. Among them is Untitled (tangled resonance / a beckoning), a large green oil-painting on linen that pulls me in through its twisted and luminous brushstrokes, layered over a shadowy underpainting.[3] A small yellow painting, Untitled (tangled resonance / watery radiance), looks from afar like a solid block of yellow, but move closer and its surface shimmers with eddies and pools of gestural tracings.[4] It refuses to be one distinct thing, and through this refusal it becomes a pool of potentiality.
Alongside these works hangs a murky painting of legs in a stream, an interpretation of those from Rembrandt’s painting. [5] Through the act of painting these legs standing in the water, I have connected them to my own body, and to the sensations I felt when I first saw Rembrandt’s image. It is a picturing of the sensation of ‘entering a painting’ - and an invitation to the viewer.
Eleanor Louise Butt, 2026
[1] Rembrandt van Rijn, A Woman Bathing in a Stream (Hendrickje Stoffels?), 1654, oil on wood (Baltic/Polish oak, identified), 61.8 x 47 cm, The National Gallery, London.
[2] The garden is known as ‘Delara’ and was designed by Edna Walling sometime in the 1930s. The Ferny Creek flows through it. It is located in Upwey, in Victoria.
[3] Untitled (tangled resonance / a beckoning), 2026. Oil on linen, 153 x 168 cm
[4] Untitled (tangled resonance / watery radiance), 2026. Oil on linen, 25.5 x 30.5 cm
[5] Tangled resonance / to enter a painting (after Rembrandt’s ‘A Woman Bathing in a Stream (Hendrickje Stoffels?)’ 1654), 2026. Oil on linen 51 x 46 cm.
Rembrandt van Rijn, A Woman Bathing in a Stream (Hendrickje Stoffels?), 1654