Janette Kerr is a painter deeply embedded in place, working at the interface between land, sea and historical experience. Kerr is not somebody who makes meticulous studies of landscape. Beyond mere topography, but with a nod towards the Northern Romantic tradition in landscape painting, her practice remains contemporary and experimental. Based in Shetland, she has a studio close to the 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, the merging of spray with air, advancing rain and mist, glancing sunlight - elements that seem to be about something intangible."
She travels extensively - mostly to wild sea and weather-scoured places that look northwards. Working alongside Norwegian oceanographers at the Meteorological Institute in Bergen in 2015, studying the unpredictability of waves and wind, had a profound influence on her work. In 2016 she sailed along the coast of Svalbard in the High Arctic on board a tall ship called the Antigua with a group of international artists. During 2020 she walked in snow storms on an international residency in Skagastrond, NW Iceland.
Kerr has a PhD in Fine Art, she is an Hon Royal Scottish Academician, RWA Academician, and Past President of the Royal West of England Academy of Art.
Exhibiting regularly across the UK and abroad, her work is held in national and international collections.