Nina Jerome Painting: Iceland Residency

Skogafoss, gouache on yupo, 11x14

During the month of June I lived in an apartment above Hafnarborg, a small museum in Hafnarfjordur, Iceland. Aside from the persistent clouds and rain, it was glorious to spend time in this country of powerful, evocative, and varied land. Two short trips, first to the south coast, and then to the Snaefellsness Peninsula, provided stunning drives and hikes. Sifting my interests from all the images that I had collected was an ongoing process of looking, sketching, drawing, and painting. Everywhere I saw tall rock cliffs with fragments cascading below, solid, angular mountains surrounded by a jumble of moss-covered lava, and rock ledges with water pouring from their heights. Iceland is a land with brooding structures that seem to be in constant flux. Sketches helped me to identify my interest in the solid vs. fluid and whole vs. fragment.

Hafnarborg, Hafnarfjordur

Hafnarborg studio

I could not have been more surprised by my attraction to waterfalls. I began sketching, then painting variations, ten in all. It was a way to represent the movement that I was seeing all around me, and to express the relentless rain that made them full and omnipresent.