JANETTE KERR SURGE
Into the Sea
COVER IMAGE
Moonlight over the Sea | JANETTE KERR
oil on canvas | 100cm x 150cm
+44 (0) 1463 783 230
art@kilmorackgallery.co.uk
Kilmorack Gallery, Inverness-shire iv4 7al SCOTLAND
JANETTE KERR
SURGE
Into the Sea
2025
We are all stardust, they say, but maybe we are all from the sea too - and some of us have a better memory of water than the stars. The sea is particularly haunting, especially when surrounded by it. Before ‘land ahoy’ is cried, sailors are in a time of saturation - just them and the goddess. My first saturation was over thirty years ago, in a small boat off the Isle of Coll. There were two of us on deck and one below. He was too scared to come up where we lunged into troughy foam before being brought up to a tumultuous landscape of waves. Eventually we added more sail and moved with the elements.
This is Janette Kerr’s artistic obsession, and she enters this state of agitated sea (krotl in Shetland dialect) more thoroughly than any artist I can think of, bringing us into the uproar (gilgal i de sea in Shetland dialect) with her.
Ongelid, Out on Rooi Ness oil on canvas
100cm x 115cm
The sea, she reminds us, is mostly in a state of constant motion, unlike land which is rockfast and moves, if at all, in geological time with only a sway and scurry of surface dwellers on top.
I have visited Janette Kerr in her studios many times. First in the far south of England.This was so far south that I got lost and met the tame English Channel. This isn’t the sea that Kerr paints. Molecules and atoms in it are too polite, which is why she looks north, mostly to Shetland and occasionally Norway or Iceland, to find inspiration. My last visit was to her Brindister studio on the West Mainland of Shetland. From there, it is a short walk to the grinding sea and it was near dark by the time we reached the harbour of her solid stone home again, and now, while photographing these latest paintings, I think about what Kerr captures. I think of Kali, the Hindu goddess. Kali has rage and powers of destruction, but she is also worshiped as a mother and for her knowledge of transcendence. This makes Kali dark and powerful like the sea. I also think about the memories of water. In homeopathy, water is thought to remember all substances previously dissolved in it, only being made more potent with further dilution.
The sea has an allure that draws the grieved to look out at it from a bench, and it inspires questers to find a boat and sail into the unknown.
Kerr has made these quests. She has strapped herself to the mast of boats, spent days painting in survival suits, and worked alongside fishermen and scientists. Kerr’s paintings are immersive and physical, echoing the processes she has seen and felt at sea. They are not of a place but about capturing Kali’s power - to destroy, to heal and to remember. It is not surprising that she has been described as ‘the best painter of the sea in these islands.’
Tony Davidson, Director of Kilmorack Gallery
Listen to theTumult oil on canvas
120cm x 130cm
100cm x 100cm
Sjor sang oil on canvas
Saatbrak - Among the Villans of Ure oil on canvas
80cm x 120cm
100cm x 150cm
141cm x 150cm
Sjoljogoa, Voe of Dale oil on canvas
Moonlight over the Sea oil on canvas
Ongelid, Out of Rooi Ness oil on canvas
100cm x 115cm
Ondergro oil on canvas
100cm x 100cm
From Ness of Noonsbrough to the Vadills oil on canvas
80cm x 80cm
Sea State ii - Racing Waves over the Clet oil on canvas
80cm x 95cm
- early morning over Brinister oil on canvas
60cm x 80cmcm
Tovi-rovin
Hakk an Jap oil on canvas | 90cm x 115cm
A Gigal i de Sea oil on canvas
70cm x 90cm
Approaching Storm, Foula Disappearing oil on canvas 70cm x 95cm
A Faksin i de Sea oil on canvas 100cm x 100cm
o’deTide oil on gesso panel
41cm x 51cm
Kwirkn
Skwither oil on gesso panel 41cm x 51cm
Jannette Kerr PPRWA RSA (Hon) (b. 1959) is known for her paintings of the far North and High Arctic. Her direct experience of coastline, weather and oceanographic studies, push the boundaries between representation and abstraction.
Kerr seeks out places where change is swift, powerful and where the sea boils. The uncompromising nature of her work incorporates all the energy of Action Painting with the tangible sensations of wind-swept waves, salt spray and ocean swell. Kerr normally paints from her studios in Shetland or Somerset; but often seeks out even wilder and remoter experiences. Her residencies include Nes International art residency, Skagaströnd, Iceland (2020), Arctic Circle Programme expedition (2016), and the Meteorological Institute, Bergen, Norway.
Janette Kerr was 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. Kerr has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, and her work is represented in public and private collections world wide.