"I’ve been working in northern landscapes for the last twenty years. These are landscapes replete with history and memories, changes over geological time, forces of nature, glacially eroded topography, all of which suggests a mutability of place. Perhaps making a drawing or painting in such environments is a sort of collaborative act – dialogues between artist and place. It’s this physical immersion in landscape, the resonance between an internalized world and an external one that I’m after; as I draw and paint, this spills out onto the page and canvas - active engagements with landscape, intuitive responses reflecting energy and confusion, fleeting moments. These are not accurate topographical depictions, but more about reflecting movement through time, what is sensed - I can’t say always understood. All these encounters provide a kind of ‘polyvocal’ aspect to my work, within them a fusion of memories and impressions, narratives and imagination, and a growing understanding of nature."
Janette Kerr, Shetland and Somerset, October 2023