Janette Kerr

Hon Royal Scottish Academician, RWA Academician and Past President of the RWA.

RSA Select

Saturday 5th September - Saturday 24th October 2026

Lower and Upper Galleries

Called ‘the best painter of the sea in these islands’ (Brian Fallon, Chief Critic of the
Irish Times), Janette Kerr is an artist deeply embedded in place. For the last 15
years, Kerr has worked from her studio in Shetland. A painter of extremes and
instabilities, her sea paintings and drawings push the boundaries between
representation and abstraction. Charcoal drawings and small paintings made on-site
in all weathers become the basis for larger work developed in the studio.

Janette Kerr, Hon Royal Scottish Academician, RWA Academician and Past President of the RWA.

She writes, ‘My paintings are about movement and rhythms of sea and wind,
swelling and breaking waves, spray merging with air, advancing rain and mist,
glancing sunlight - elements that seem to be intangible. It’s this physical immersion
in landscape, a resonance between an internalized world and an external one that
I’m after - active engagements with landscape, intuitive responses reflecting the
energy and confusion that I experience - and hope to reflect in the paintings I make.'
Residencies include Oqaatsut, Disko Bay, Greenland (2022), NES International art
residency, Skagaströnd, Iceland (2020), an Arctic Circle Programme expedition to
Svalbard on a tall ship (2016), and at the Meteorological Institute, Bergen, Norway
(2014).

She has initiated and developed collaborative projects involving sound, film, and
archival research on Shetland, and is currently working with a group of walking
artists on a ‘Deep Encounters’ project - a multifaceted mapping of a small piece of
land, that includes geography, history, and ecology.

She has a PhD in Fine Art. Her work is held in national and international collections.
See her website for full CV: https://www.janettekerr.co.uk/

Foula disappearing, Voe of Dale

oil on canvas

90x75cm

£9,500

Saatbrak (amongst the Villians of Ure)
Saatbrak definition: spray and foam from breaking waves

Oil on canvas

121x81cm
£9,500

Katrisper

Katisper definition: a very strong gale

Oil on canvas

80 x 80cm (83cm x 83cm framed)

£7,000

Sjukavi

Sjukavi definition: agitated sea with waves going against the wind

Oil on canvas

80cm x 80cm (83cm x 83cm framed)

£7,000

Our Art Galleries are free to visit and open to the public 10am - 5pm, Mondays - Saturdays.

If you wish to purchase work by this artist, please use the contact details below. We can accept payment at the Museum or are equally happy to invoice and take payment by bank transfer. At the end of the exhibition, the Museum will help to arrange delivery or collection of your artwork. When a cost is incurred, this is passed on to the buyer. Within Scotland, we usually manage to deploy our “informal” art delivery network at no cost.