EXTREMES AND INSTABILITIES
Janette Kerr likes a good storm - especially if it involves huge breaking, crashing waves. A painter deeply embedded in place, working at the interface between land, sea, and historical experience, she’s been called the ‘best painter of the sea in these islands’ (Brian Fallon, Chief Critic of the Irish Times).
‘..the energy in Kerr’s work reflects the power of nature itself, particularly with regard to her wayward scrawling, cutting, and dragging into her painted surface….’, (Ian McKay, State of Sea catalogue, Art North Projects 2020)
The trappers hut, Svalbard (for Keilhau, father of Norwegian geology). 100 x 150cm. Graphite & watercolour on Mylar, hand-stitched onto Fabriano acid-free cartridge paper
This drawing has been a while in making. A few years ago I flew to Svalbard to sail along the High Arctic coast on a tall ship as part of an art & science expedition
Vast glaciers disappear into drifting mist hanging in snow-strewn granite mountains, formed over 400 million years ago. Each day this fragile monochrome world of rock and ice slid past I scribbled furiously in a small sketch book, making watery images from snow and smudged charcoal, as a thunder grey and pale blue world slid by.
Back in my studio I began to make a large drawing on Mylar, a slippery, translucent surface, using graphite and a touch of charcoal powder. I wanted to draw something that would reflect a sense of the vastness of scale and limitlessness that can destabilize perception. The drawing sat on my studio wall for months - even a couple of years, periodically I would return to it, sometimes erasing more than I drew. Yet it never seemed complete. I would sit staring at the emerging image, ice shelves appeared, mist swirled obscuring the mountain tops. The drawing travelled with me from Somerset to my Shetland studio, where I continue working on it, even, at one stage, adding more strips of Mylar, which I then removed. But it never seemed complete. Then a sudden realisation - what was missing was something to provide that sense of the sheer scale of such an extreme environment on the peripheries of the world. I remembered seeing small huts used by hunters perched in improbable places.
In the final drawing, The trappers hut stands on a small promontory, whose banks drop steeply down to the sea. An oasis, against the backdrop of mist flowing upwards over the dark bleak, inhospitable terrain of rock and mountains that stretch up behind it. On first glance at the drawing you don’t see it. Then the eye is drawn to the only bit of colour – a smudge of vermillion. A small dot in the vast landscape
Author Peter Davidson in his book The Idea of North (2004) refers to its ‘absolute difficult beauty’. ‘It is not that the land is simply beautiful but that it is powerful. Its power derives from the tension between its obvious beauty and its capacity to take life. Its power flows into the mind from a realisation of how darkness and light are bound together within it..”.
NEWS
Most of the work on my website is for sale - each image has details of size and medium and should indicate whether it’s in my studio or with a gallery. Please get in touch if you are interested in purchasing a painting or drawing
Current Exhibitions
I am currently showing a large drawing at this year’s 200th anniversary Annual Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.
Prior to the show opening, I attended the RSA Varnishing Day Lunch and had a wonderful time chatting to other artists and patrons. Thanks to Annie Cattrell for curating the show so brilliantly - and am excited to find that my drawing, The trappers hut, Svalbard (for Keilhau, father of Norwegian geology), had sold even before the exhibition was officially open.
I’ve recently delivered a group of new paintings to The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh and Clifton Contemporary gallery, Bristol. and will be popping over to Yell to deliver some more to the Shetland Gallery, next week (May 26th).
(Contact for these galleries is at the end of this section)
A stoor o’ wind, Brindister 40x40cm 16”x16 oil on linen, framed 51x51cm
A pure cold wind blows me half way there, Voe of Dale 30.5x40.5cm 16”x12” oil on gesso panel. framed 41x52cm
The Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh also has a number of my small paintings available - If they are not on the walls then please ask to see them! https://www.openeyegallery.co.uk/artists/54-janette-kerr/works/
Map Scramble
Last month I took part in an online session called ‘Map Scramble’ and presented a walking project called As the Crow Flies: Walking a straight line
This was the first of an initial series of three Map Scrambles in which walking artists share how each of them document walking art, specifically by adapting, modifying or creating their own maps. They were recorded and are available to listen to free: https://walklistencreate.org/video-category/walk-%C2%B7-listen-%C2%B7-cafe/
Other projects:
I’ve been setting up a year-long Deep Mapping Project in conjunction with Walking the Land https://walkingtheland.org.uk/deep-encounters/
This is an intensive look at a particular place that will include geography, history, and ecology. Working collaboratively, but from different parts of the world, there will be periodic conversations about how we are each representing our piece of land, and ideas for shared activities. Each artist will walk the perimeter of their area, tracing the outline, recording what it contains using photos, words, drawings, maps, sound etc. Walking our chosen places, getting to know them, activities and engagements will develop gradually from a growing familiarity. And we will be playful in our responses!
14 artists are involved and we’ve just applied for some funding from the Landscape Research Group; fingers and toes crossed!