Elemental Nature is a solo exhibition tracking sixty years of Merseyside-born artist Keith Grant’s career. Paintings, drawings and archive material are available to view at The Atkinson in Southport and on their website via digital exhibition until 1st March 2025. Curated by guest curator, writer and critic Andrew Lambirth and built around two of Grant’s paintings from the Atkinson collection –‘View from the Bedroom Window’ (c.1953) and ‘Cosmos’ (1993) – it contains over forty artworks thematically arranged around the four elements, Fire, Earth, Air and Water. Elemental Nature surveys the artist’s lifelong love affair with our world through his vibrant landscapes.
‘I passionately feel for the earth and its species and believe we have never needed an awareness of the natural environment more than we do today.’ – Keith Grant
Grant’s travels around the globe are the main inspiration for his stark modernist compositions of our natural world. Along with his twin Roy, Grant was fostered then adopted and grew up in Orrell, Merseyside. Once he left school, he worked at the Liverpool Co-op in Bootle, just a few short stops away from Southport on the train line that runs along the Sefton coast. Art was always on his mind and as a young man was a regular contributor of drawings to the Liverpool Co-op magazine as well as attending watercolour evening classes at Bootle School of Art. Later, during his National Service in the RAF between 1948-50, he was tasked with painting murals in the canteen. Moving to Camden in 1950, he studied at the Working Men’s College, Willesden School of Art and the Royal College of Art, with his first solo exhibition taking place in Bootle in 1955. He found work in both set design for theatre and more mural painting. He has had an extensive and varied career as an art teacher and lecturer at Goldsmiths’ and St Martins amongst many others. In later years, he undertook trips and residencies worldwide which have inspired his life’s work.
Influenced by neo-Romantic painters such as Graham Sutherland and Paul Nash during his time at RCA between 1955 and 1958, he also studied under respected British artists John Minton, Colin Hayes, Kenneth Rowntree and Carel Weight who taught him to draw and paint in various media. The dramatic nature of the landscape and how abstraction can enhance representation of the elements in his work are key lessons he was taught to consider in his own practice. The artistic language of mid-century England is a constant presence even in Grant’s contemporary works. Contrasts such as land and sky, fire and ice, play a major part in his compositions, often with one playing off the other as an oppositional force, adding textural interest. His deep-rooted connection to the Northern hemisphere is apparent in the way he revisits visual themes in both terrain and climate. This is evidenced in the cooler shades used to delineate mountain ranges and glaciers alongside arboreal forms that rise upward from the earth, punctuating the sky. His frequent visits to Scotland, Iceland and Norway were the inspiration for works such as ‘Volcanic Landscape Iceland’ (c.1966) and ‘Svolvaer Motif’ (1962). So strong was his urge to stay in these regions that Grant currently lives and works in Norway with his Norwegian wife Hilde Ellingsen.
With forty years between the two paintings owned by The Atkinson, Elemental Nature borrows heavily from other collections including Lakeland Arts, Touchstones in Rochdale, the Royal College of Art as well as works in private ownership. Grant is also represented in the Government Art Collection and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. His widespread appeal continues to build both in and out of the North West as one of the UK’s foremost living landscape painters. Looking around the exhibition, it is clear to see why. For fans of the mindful calm that comes from observing remote nature, Grant’s works offer a window into places they may never have been, a survey into the road less travelled taken by the artist on their behalf. Well-read and an admirer of classical music, the lyrical nature of his other hobbies seep into the painted surface through poetic titles and repeated, rhythmic strokes. Moody and introspective, Grant’s works have a calmingly atmospheric effect on me and the space surrounding them.
Fire flashes in hues of red and orange intermittently throughout this exhibition, perhaps a suggestion of the very real climate catastrophe we find ourselves in. This mainly signifies danger in the form of lava, however, it also reminds me of wild brush fires sweeping across landscapes. Both beautiful and intimidating, they recall Grant’s time studying volcanoes in Iceland when he was mesmerised by their aesthetic beauty and all- consuming force. ‘Catastrophe’ (2015) is a dramatic oil pastel on canvas in strong black and red tones. It froths and boils with intensity, a maelstrom of disaster and hellfire which places the viewer at the centre of the action, giving a feeling of helplessness in the face of such a destructive force.
When painting the earth, Grant manages to draw out the complexly diverse nature of each land he visits, whether that be flat grass land, thick forests or soaring mountains. In each composition he employs horizon lines that demarcate distinct zones on the picture plane to create geometric patterns. The lush fecundity of cypress and olive trees in ‘Olive Grove & Mountain, Samos’ (1986) suggest a pastoral serenity related to rural life or holidaying in the Mediterranean landscape, its terracotta earth visible through the spaciously planted grove. Rather than focus on the wilds of our world, he instead chooses a peaceful scene of a place in which he found comfort by visiting many times. This image shows a softer side of nature compared to the imposing imagery of some of his other works. In Ancient Greek mythology, Olive trees are sacred, acting as a symbol of peace and friendship. Cypress trees represent immortality and memorial linking Grant’s image to the timelessness of the natural world and our insignificant place in it.
Grant is fascinated by air and sees it as a sustaining force for everything we see in nature as much as it is also destructive. In ‘Winter Storm, Vesterålen’ (c.1995), we see air in the form of blustery storm clouds whipping up the foaming sea. Rather than still and unseen, this representation of air is clearly visible, creating tumultuous areas of movement across the face of the canvas. A dark purple Norwegian sky broods in the sunset as a billowing mass high in the atmosphere, dwarfing the white seabird being buffeted around like a bleached tumbleweed. The power of nature is depicted so clearly here in one small image, I find it one of the most effective works in the exhibition.
Water plays a significant part in many works on display at the Atkinson. Some in the form of seas and rivers, others in the form of frozen icebergs. Grant has always been interested in the narcissistic nature of water in allowing nature to reflect and distort itself. In saying this, he equates nature with the very human activity of regarding its own reflection, personifying the natural world. Meditation is wedded to water according to Grant, which can be seen clearly in his sparse yet characterful polyptych ‘Maritime Polar: Snow Drift, Clear Sky’ (1973). This is the sixth part of a twenty-four canvas series which shares its title with a four-act Beckettian fantasy drama play by Grant. A monumental ice floe dominates the foreground of each canvas while snow-capped mountains hover above a dense sea to the back like poignant reminders of retreating ice. At our current moment in history, glaciers are being diminished at an astonishing rate due to climate change. These depictions are place markers in the life and death of these perennial ice formations.
One of my favourite works in the exhibition must be ‘Milada & Birch Grove’ (1969), a psychedelic oil painting featuring turning, dappled leaves overlapping a pale woman’s face. A departure from his usual style and subject, Grant rarely painted portraits, especially at this time, although more recently he has been commissioned to paint figures including Prince Andrew in 1994 and poet Sir Geoffrey Hill in 2015. Diminutive in size compared to his grander landscapes, small stature does not affect its appeal, and I could not move along to the next painting for some time. Both palette and theme recall Millais’ ‘Ophelia’ (1851-2) and Manet’s ‘Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe’ (1862-3) with a more modernist twist. This image of a young woman peering out at the viewer from her arboured sanctuary was inspired by Grant’s travelling companion Milada Tashnerova during their September 1969 stay in Seljord, Telemark. Her expression suggests an inquisitive nature or perhaps affection, platonic or otherwise. Whatever the intended message, ‘Milada’ is a mysterious, sensual image brimming with the allure of youth. She is painted as a figure from folkloric tradition, a Green Woman in the form of a foliate head or she is a wood nymph reminiscent of one of Grant’s later drawings ‘Bronze Nymph at ‘Writers Block’ (2014). This is one of a series of studies in pencil created during his second stay at Jeffrey Archer’s home in Sa Torre, Mallorca. I feel that this work links to Grant’s apparent love of much younger women, – these characters play a constant role in his life – as is evidenced by his relationships and character studies. It is a theme repeated throughout art history by male artists such as Rodin, Picasso, Rivera, Andre and many others whose younger female partners act as muse for their work. Camouflaged yet revealed and balancing between seasons, ‘Milada’ is just one example of metamorphosis which has become a repeated theme of Grant’s and is a beautiful example of his adaptability.
Keith Grant: Elemental Nature, The Atkinson, Southport 14 December 2024 – 1 March 2025.
Kirsty Jukes is an art historian and writer from Lancashire.
Published 28.02.2025 by Natalie Hughes in Reviews
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