The last ten days of May 2025 were spent experiencing Iceland’s amazing landscape, travelling around the island in a camper van. This was something that Kit Kelen and I hadn’t had an opportunity to do on our first artist residency at Hafnarborg in May 2017, and it provided a wealth of material to develop during the month-long residency that followed.
We arrived in Iceland on the last day of an unseasonably warm week. Unfortunately that did not last. Mist and rain are not convenient, but they enhanced our shared sense that this is an environment where the forces of nature are everywhere in evidence and in flux. During the road trip I made a lot of sketches and took many photographs with a view to working from these in the studio/flat in Hafnarfjörður.
The residency is located at Hafnarborg – Hafnarfjörður Centre of Culture and Fine Art, in Hafnarfjörður, the ‘town in the lava’. The residency, which is located just a half hour bus ride south of central Reykjavík, is a exemplar of culturally-minded philanthropy. Until 1984 the building was the Hafnarfjarðar Apótek, the premises of chemist Sverrir Magnússon and and his wife, Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir. It was converted into Hafnarborg in 1983. The couple presented the town of Hafnarfjörður with a gift certificate stipulating that their house be used for cultural activities that enhanced the town’s art and cultural life – an art museum, exhibition rooms, a residency for international artists, and a venue for concerts. Many thanks to all of the team at Hafnarborg for all you do in supporting the artists!
Whilst at the residency I was delighted to receive an invitation to exhibit as a guest artist in the Australian Watercolour Institute’s annual exhibition, ‘Visions and Vistas’. This necessitated my finishing a large (76 x 56 cm) watercolour by the end of the residency – after purchasing materials to work on that scale. The picture titled ‘Under Vestrahorn (June 2025)’ is the result of that process.
Currently, I have a wealth of material from this trip to develop into paintings, drawings and prints, as well as another lot of sketches and photographic notes from a 6 week trip to the Scottish highlands (Newtonmore), the Isle of Arran and the Isle of Skye.
