Janette Kerr

"My process of making paintings involves extremes and instabilities - places of rapid change and shift - both physically and meteorologically"

The works of Janette Kerr are more than ‘sea paintings’. They are responses to environment, sound, silence and movement: the swell and breaking of waves, the confluence of spray with air, emerging sunlight and advancing rain. They convey the interplay between dynamic forces: the pure, untethered character of nature and its primal energy.

 To harness the restless, elusive edges between place and atmosphere, science and spirit, experience and spontaneity, Janette immerses herself completely in her subject, travelling in the wildest places, and particularly in Shetland and the Far North. Wherever she paints, there is always a sense of the northern romantic tradition – of embracing the sublime – counterbalanced with a contemporary and experimental attitude. 

 Janette has initiated and joined numerous collaborative projects, using film and sound installation to get ever closer to the essence of places, their communities, peripheries and weather patterns. She has worked with Norwegian oceanographers at the Meteorological Institute in Bergen, studying the unpredictability of waves and wind: a process that has profoundly influenced her work. With a PhD in Fine Art, Janette is an Hon Royal Scottish Acadamician, and Past President of the Royal West of England Academy. She exhibits internationally and her work is held in numerous collections.

Janette features in Channel 5’s ‘Shetland - Scotland’s Wondrous Isles’ and discusses her work.

Also click HERE to see Janette in her short film ‘The Sea’.

Sea Changes by Janette Kerr - a recent exhibition of her work.