Janette Kerr: States of Sea
'My paintings represent immediate responses to sound and silences within the landscape around me; they are about movement and the rhythms of sea and wind, swelling and breaking waves, spray merging with air, advancing rain and mist, glancing sunlight elements that seem to be about something intangible.' - Janette Kerr
Janette Kerr is a painter deeply embedded in place. She works at the interface between land, sea and historical experience. Called 'the best painter of the sea in these islands' by Brian Fallon, Chief Critic of the Irish Times, Kerr delights in foul weather. Drawn to the perimeters of land, her work is an index of edges and ledges, exposed headlands and wind-swept seas. For the last ten years, her focus has been drawn to Shetland and the far north. Ian McKay*, editor of Art North, describes Kerr as 'a creative nomad, with a calling northward and a finely-honed understanding of what some might consider 'remote' northern terrain'.
Kerr travels extensively - always to wild sea and weather-scoured places. She sailed along the coast of Svalbard in the High Arctic onboard a tall ship called the Antigua with a group of international artists. More recently she has been on an international residency in Skagaströnd in the northwest corner of Iceland. In Norway, she worked alongside Norwegian oceanographers at the meteorological Institute in Bergen studying the unpredictability of waves and wind, which had a profound influence on her work. And of course we have Shetland, which is the focus of the paintings in this current exhibition.
Kerr presents us with 20 recent paintings that she relates to the historic Meteorological Office 'State of Sea Card' (devised by Irish Royal Navy officer, Francis Beaufort in the early 19th century). Each painting refers to descriptions that represent the state of the sea.
As Kerr explains: the basic driver of sea state is the wind. The stronger the wind, the greater the distance (the fetch) over which it blows unimpeded, and the longer it blows, the bigger the waves. The World Meteorological Organization gives thirteen sea conditions for the Beaufort wind scale, from zero to twelve (calm to hurricane).
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Sea State - force 8 - northwesterly winds, Ness of Bakka, 2020oil on canvas86cm x 150cm
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Sea state force 10 - Battling with the Villians of Ure, 2020oil on canvas120cm x 190cm
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Sea state force 10 - Trawler on the skerries, 2020oil on canvas82cm x 95cm
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Sea state force 10 - Waves breaking on the Clett, Silwick, 2020oil on canvas122cm x 183cm
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Sea state force 10 - White sea surface, Unst, 2020oil on canvas80cm x 80cm
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Sea state force 11 - Racing waves on the Clett, Silwick , 2020oil on canvas80cm x 95cm
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Sea state force 12 - Cresting waves and spray, 2020oil on canvas76cm x 102cm
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Sea state force 12 - Hurricane Abigail, Scatness, 2020oil on canvas153cm x 183cm
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Sea state force 2 - Small waves, bright day, 2020oil on canvas80cm x 120cm
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Sea state force 4 - Frequent white waves, 2020oil on canvas90cm x 120cm
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Sea state force 7 - Sea heaping up, 2020oil on canvas100cm x 100cm
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Sea state force 7 - Waves racing inland , 2020oil on canvas80cm x 80cm
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Sea state force 8 - High waves and spindrift, 2020oil on canvas100cm x 100cm
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Sea state force 9 - Visibility affected, 2020oil on canvas100cm x 140cm
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Sea state force 9 - Waves toppling and tumbling, 2020oil on canvas80cm x 101cm