Janette Kerr HYPERBOREA beyond the north wind
28 May - 26 June 2021
Janette Kerr HYPERBOREA beyond the north wind
Hyperborea: the relentless beauty of frozen lands from Silwick to Skagaströnd
Much of this work is from my residency at Skagaströnd, a remote rural community in North West Iceland. Other paintings are from my home in Shetland. Time spent walking alone through a monochrome landscape – mountains on one side, sea on the other; even the crows sounded different here, calling overhead with distinctly Icelandic accents. So much snow; a place where there’s no horizon, no way of telling scale. My eyes search for anything that might give some clue – a slightly paler shade of white that might suggests the edge of a hill or contour; a darker shade of white, maybe indicating a rock face or distant mountain, or just a bit of grass poking through the unending white-out. I notice faint changes in the surface; lines and ripples where wind blows snow up to form ridges with blue shadows, smooth flat areas where the covering is thick and deep and I sink in up to my knees.There are faint pale orange tones where snow is stained by rock. Dark hard volcanic rock lies under ice, tiny particles of brown earth and black sand thrown up, mingling with crystalline white. Sometimes heavy mist covers the landscape, with blue sky and sun above. Then the mist starts to move, slowly revealing the tantalising mountain Spákonufel that dominates Skagaströnd. Unscalable at this time of year, bewitching; it draws me, but remains beyond reach; so near, so far.
It’s different out there every day; I watch pancake ice forming in the harbour, waves breaking on black sand, chunks of ice falling into the water. Snow whirls into the air catching the light, clouds of it sweep over mountains tops, changing shapes and angles in the land. Sometimes more black craggy rock reveals itself, sometimes everything disappears completely. Then suddenly the sun is shining, sparkling on ice, catching in a river flowing to the sea, its surface reflecting mountains and blue sky. Storms hit the town, the wind harsh, whistling and thudding against the house all night. I am literally blown towards the sea and studio, making my way blindly by simply knowing it’s a left turn out of the gate, just faint traces of road edge and outline of buildings as I plough through thick snow, the wind blotting out any other sounds. Some days it’s so bad that I think of what it must have been like for polar explorers like Shackleton and Scott lost in a vast white arctic land. Buffeted along, snow hits me, blowing across the ground piling up; I can hardly see where I’m going, but I go anyway - which is part of the adventure.
Janette Kerr drawing Skagastrond, Iceland
Walking and drawing is an important part of making work, a solitary activity that fixes impressions, recording my presence in a place. I set out each day with my sketchbook, sit beside blocks of ice lying strewn across frozen ground. The wind is often strong, snowflakes swirling around me as I frantically try to capture the changing landscape. My paint freezes and then does its own thing better than I can do. The images often don’t last beyond quickly-taken photographs before the wind destroys them. They are a collaboration between me and the elements and the landscape; from first mark to last, wind gusting against me, pushing paint across page, water freezing on the paper forming patterns, icy grit blown and mixing with wet paint. Time passes and I have no idea how long I’ve been out there, the marks I make piling up, overlaid, fusing, contradicting, obliterating, reinforcing each other. All landscape bears marks of time and my drawings map the passage of my time out there, and are a connection between my inner and this outer world. There is a surrendering to the moment, interplay between control and no control. I hope these drawings and the subsequent paintings I make in the studio go some way to suggest the movement, energy and sounds in the landscape. The author Nan Shepherd writes of walking amongst the elements, of how such elements are ungovernable, unpredictable. Weather changes so fast here and although I am used to this in Shetland, here it is more extreme. There is an unforgiving quality, a relentless beauty in this wild landscape.
Janette Kerr, May 2021
Surge of Sea and Ice oil on canvas 131cm x 160cm
Hvítt út, Skagastrond oil on canvas 120cm x 130cm
Hvítt út, Skagaströnd oil on canvas 120cm x 130cm
Watching Spakonufell disappearing oil on canvas 152.5cm x 183cm
Waiting, Skagaströnd oil on canvas 80cm x 95cm
Silence, Skagaströnd oil on canvas 80cm x 100cm
The Walker no 6, Iceland oil on canvas 80cm x 120cm
The Walker no 1, Iceland oil on linen 40cm x 40cm
The Walker no 2, Iceland oil on linen 40cm x 40cm
The Walker no 3, Iceland oil on linen 40cm x 40cm
The Walker no 4, Iceland oil on linen 40cm x 40cm
Cold Wind across the Sea oil on canvas 75cm x 95cm
Silence, Skagaströnd oil on canvas 80cm x 100cm
Disappearing, Skagaströnd oil on board 30xm x 40cm
Sea ice - slow move, Skagaströnd oil on canvas 65cm x 85cm
Looking for the North
Directions are relative: and the line that divides east from west impossible to define. Is it Rome, Constantinople or Delhi? If you follow the Earth’s longitude belly, you will meet your original self 28,000 miles later. Head north, however, and it is different.You get somewhere and know you have arrived when the compass spins. Around you is the white of cold elements - wind, ice and sea. Here at the furthest far, you are alive… but only just and further… we almost see that too, towards the source. The Greeks wrote of ‘Hyperborea,’ and described it as a land beyond the north (the boreal) wind. To the Hellenics it represented the edge of the world and the location of this mythical place is not known. Possibly it is in the Balkans, Scandinavia, Britain or Siberia – but there was always trade in amber and furs between the south and the far north, so this place of wild unknown was always there, in our heads: terrifying to some and a lure others. To Janette Kerr is it is a pull. She is the ultimate northseeking artist, looking ‘beyond the north wind’ in search of elemental experiences. Her studio in Brindister on Shetland faces north. To Kerr it is not the final destination, it is a base camp. The journey doesn’t stop here. The most famous tale of an artist’s elemental experience is J.M. Turner’s story of being lashed to the mast of steamboat ‘Ariel’ during a storm. This probably never happened, and the boat’s name inspired by Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest;’ with Turner, an artistic version of Prospero, but it
Námaskarô oil on canvas 80cm x 100cm
does show the desire to connect to the sublime. Sometimes this is referred to as the Northern Romantic movement, but Kerr goes beyond this and approaches it with almost scientific fervour, using some of the first scientific tools, a sketchpad and pencil. Janette Kerr has often painted from a boat, surrounded by a heavy swell and a disappearing horizon. This experience is very different from painting at a cliff top. There is exhilaration and fear, spray and just the most human thoughts that rise when surrounded by the sea for hours at a time. She also speaks with the fishermen and storytellers, and studies charts and oceanographic drawings. Everything gets absorbed into her sea paintings and, like an individual wave, each one is very different but at the same time connected. Wind, water, sun and rain, north and south, east and west, when on a boat at sea, become the same thing, and a great connection is made. This exhibition – ‘Hyperborea: beyond the north wind’ – comes out of Janette Kerr’s long obsession with this: looking north into the gale, studying and painting. Tony Davidson, May 2021
Weather study - early morning over the Voe, Brindister oil on board 21cm x 30cm
Weather study - glimpse of light oil on board 24cm x 29cm
01463 783 230 art@kilmorackgallery.co.uk by beauly, inverness-shire iv4 7al
ISBN 978-1-8384862-1-1
Janette Kerr is known for her paintings and drawings of the far North and High Arctic. Her direct experience of coastline, weather and oceanographic studies, push at the boundaries between representation and abstraction. Kerr's residencies include Nes International art residency, Skagaströnd, Iceland (2020), Arctic Circle Programme expedition (2016), and the Meteorological Institute, Bergen, Norway. Elected a Royal West of England Academy Academician in 2003, and RWA President (2011-16), she is an Honorary Royal Scottish Academician and Visiting Research Fellow in Fine Art, UWE Bristol. A long-standing history of exhibiting regularly across the UK and abroad, her work is held in national and international collections.