BICTON’S Joan Peters has achieved a lot in life.
For the past 25 years she’s been a media and entertainment lawyer, was awarded the Order of Australia in 2022 for her contribution to the performing arts, was twice nominated for WA Citizen of the Year and founded the charity Be Kids Australia.
Oh, and she was an inaugural ‘Singapore Girl’ with Singapore Airlines, before migrating to Perth in 1975 and trying her hand as a restaurateur, sound recordist and various other jobs.
Having lived a full life, Peters could be forgiven for resting on her laurels, but four years ago she started dabbling in art and attended a life drawing session.
• Seaweed (at Skagaströnd)
She was a natural, and ended up writing and illustrating two children’s books during covid, and contributed paintings to a group exhibition in York in 2022.
But she wasn’t done yet, and in a bold left-field move, Peters travelled to Skagaströnd, a small remote fishing town in northwest Iceland, for a two-month artist residency.
“It was summer. The sun hardly set. With a population of around 400 people, life was calm and kind,” Peter says.
“I went off the grid and relished being with a creative cohort of 12 artists from around the world, all with different artistic endeavours.
• A Town to Awaken In (Skagaströnd)
“Each day I would walk in the vastness that surrounded this fishing town of Skagaströnd and then go to the studio to paint until late in the afternoon after which time I would write and knit (knitting is very big in Iceland).”
The residency inspired a series of wispy paintings that beautifully capture the soft, never-ending summer light and the barren, yet pretty, Icelandic landscape.
Fragile and somewhat dreamy, highlights include some abstract seaweed that could be mistaken for the Northern Lights, a watercolour of two arctic terns frolicking, and an acrylic of the brightly coloured buildings in the fishing village.
“At first I searched for familiarity in botanical and structural subject matters to paint,” Peters says.
“But, Iceland is pretty much void of trees and there was little evidence of urbanisation where I was. Instead, I found myself responding to the creative unrest of the blackened basalt terrain melding into the movement of the ever changing ocean, the half-light of evenings, the silence, the quickening of the short summer period, the occasional shrill call of the arctic terns.
“I paint from perception with a minimalist colour palette, allowing the present to surface in my work. Time is of no consequence.”
• Joan Peters on the boat to Skagaströnd (she’s all rugged up for the Icelandic summer!).
Peters says the residency was a humbling experience and inspired the next chapter in her creative journey.
“I painted what I could not find words for. Soon I simply did not even have to believe in myself or my work. Painting is not a means to prove anything, it is the opposite,” she says. “Iceland gave me the understanding that starting from nothing is a recurring motif in my life and that in itself gives me the courage to continue with this fragile process of art; courage enough to commence a Masters in Fine Arts at Curtin University in February. Who would have thought!”
You can check out the paintings from Peters’ residency at Iceland Ísland, her debut solo exhibition, at Found and Sorted Gallery, 138 South Terrace, Fremantle from December 2-30.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK