Reviews

These two works function together, while each may stand alone. In the painting, we seem to be looking down onto the surface of the earth from the air, or seeing an enigmatic black hole in space, while the three-dimensional work alludes to the earth, a sphere travelling through space. Surface, dimensions and time interact here, and the works entail deeply-thought existential questions that lead to recollections of a poem by Steinn Steinarr: “Time is like water, / and water is as cold and deep / as consciousness. // And time is like a reflection / made partly by water, / partly by me.”

A strong sense of materiality and texture has been characteristic of Guðrún Einarsdóttir’s works from the outset. The artist’s methods are reminiscent of alchemy, as the elements are left to break down for some time, so the outcome is unforeseeable, as in the process of creation of the earth. Guðrún has had a long career as a painter; the actual material she works with is invariably the true import of the work, with the addition of the idea of the importance of visual connections with nature. It suits Guðrún well to work on a horizontal surface with a rich materiality, oil paints and additional media, so that ultimately the work resembles a bas-relief. The oil globe is a solid block made up of accreted oil paint, and it took a long time to complete.

These two works in the collection of the National Gallery of Iceland form a part of a series entitled Material Landscape, on which the artist has been working since 2009, and which she has exhibited widely. In the making of the works, she says she explores the landscape of the material itself, focussing on the activity of the substances she works with: oil paints, oils, siccative media and turpentine. The series may also be linked to Iceland’s wildernesses, as the mixtures of media on the canvas effervesce, forming in their own way an uneven and rugged surface that seems as tangible as the lava fields in the paintings of Jóhannes Sveinsson Kjarval, and at the same time a new material landscape.

Painting and Nature! Most of us will think of “landscapes” and this art form has in fact had an illustrious career since the emergence of the first examples in European art at the beginning of the 16th century. As it is, a “landscape” is a spatial arrangement of our natural surroundings, of mountains and valleys, slopes and plains, forests and fields, rivers and seas. This type of scenery, however, is only one side of nature’s coin and even before the first landscape paintings appeared on the scene painting and nature had already formed an alliance.

A synthesis of the traditional and modernist views — “nature as painting” and “nature of the painting” — is found in the works of the Icelandic painter Guðrún Einarsdóttir (b. 1957). The whole surface of her canvases is covered with organic patterns and repetitions. Seen close-up they have an unrecognisable and sometimes microscopic character. These structures represent the artist’s reworking of the multitude of different surface textures that Guðrún Einarsdóttir encounters out in nature: lichen on crumbling rocks, lush green algae at the water’s edge, damp and springy moss in the bog, ridges in glacial moraines, ice crystals on the cliff face, volcanic lava blobs, the sandy and muddy vortices in the icy glacial rivers — all kinds of patterns that catch the artist’s eye.

The “natural ornaments” are explored and preserved as photographs by the artist for further artistic processing in the studio. The process recalls the work of a chemist in her laboratory: the canvas is placed in a horizontal position to reduce the effect of gravity on the paint, and oils, paints and solvents are applied in different mixtures. Then the drying process takes over and new patterns develop on top of the ones already created by the artist. The process may last more than a year, so several paintings are always being worked on at the same time.

Because their point of reference is a visual experience in a landscape, the paintings of Guðrún Einarsdóttir are to a certain extent imitations of nature. However, the drying process produces effects which could never be imitated by hand. The coagulated surfaces are creating surreal forms akin to nature, whose fantastic creations repeatedly surpass reality.

The paintings of Guðrún Einarsdóttir make variable impressions on the observer, according to whether they are viewed from afar or in close proximity. On closer scrutiny their homogeneous surfaces resolve themselves into complex organic natural forms, emphasised by a raised, sometimes thickened, surface, and by texture or colour. While Einarsdóttir’s paintings are abstract, and do not directly depict natural phenomena, there is an undeniable resemblance to nature/landscape art. Subjects in nature are viewed from above, either from so close that they recall a sample on a microscope slide, or from a huge distance.

The nature of Iceland has been the main focus of Icelandic art since the eve of modern art and this still is in spite of its strong international influence. Its enormous power and magical quality makes it a constant inspiration and source of ideas for artists regardless of the media they work in and their diverse result. This has also been the case throughout Guðrún Einarsdóttir’s painting.

In the summer of 2000 painter Guðrún Einarsdóttir took part in an exhibition entitled “Energy Centres” in the Laxá hydroelectric station in the north of Iceland. Her contribution consisted of a large circular work or tondo, made mostly out of wood and styrofoam and painted white. Like the other participants in the show, she had been given the task of making visible concepts such as “energy”, “flow”, “electricity” and “natural power”. Her solution is both simple and effective.