Parnell Gallery is delighted to welcome painter Isobella Turenhout to our roster. A contemporary artist working in a hyperrealist style, her practice explores the relationship between women, water and landscape. Working primarily in acrylic, her paintings depict female figures situated within coastal environments, pools, and expanses of blue; spaces that evoke both psychological stillness and emotional depth. Water operates as a recurring motif throughout Turenhout’s work, functioning as a site of reflection, immersion, and transformation. These scenes draw on personal memories of growing up in Cape Town, where ocean and pool culture were integral to everyday life, and are imbued with a strong sense of nostalgia and escape.

Turenhout’s compositions are carefully directed and controlled, often derived from her own photographic source material. This insistence on self-generated imagery allows the work to remain deeply personal while also foregrounding her multidisciplinary background in photography. The resulting paintings blur the boundaries between photographic precision and painterly sensitivity, with close attention paid to surface, texture, and the subtle modulation of light across the body and water. Her use of blue is particularly significant, not only as a reference to the aquatic environments she depicts, but as a deliberate emotional register, associated with calm, clarity, and repose.

With a background in graphic design and a strong interest in interior and spatial aesthetics, Turenhout approaches painting with an acute awareness of how an artwork inhabits space.

Her works are composed with consideration for their presence within domestic and architectural contexts, balancing intimacy with visual impact. Influences from fashion photography, cinematography, and theatrical production are evident in her framing and tonal control, lending her paintings a subtly cinematic quality that invites prolonged viewing.

To view all available works by Taurenhout, please click here