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"Portraits of Icelandic Nature:
Paintings by Olafsson"
Published on the occasion of
the exhibition in Canada .
Exhibition arranged by The Icelandic Embassy in Canada and
Friends of Iceland.
Introduction by Jonas Freydal Thorsteinsson, General Manager Artibus,
National Treasure
Fine Art Gallery Iceland
Artibus Fine Arts Press
Reykjavik, Iceland
Icelandic Nature – the vast diversity and intricate interplay of
life and environment on earth – is our indispensable common
heritage, sheltering and sustaining all mankind. Through the
ages, nature’s endless variety and riddles have challenged
naturalists and philosophers; her inexhaustible images have
inspired artists, poets, and writers. As observers of Icelandic
nature, the artist and the naturalist have always been natural
allies here in Iceland. But each has explored the reaches of
nature from a unique perspective, portraying nature’s reality in
different but complementary form.
Icelandic Naturalists have spent centuries cataloguing and
explaining the enormous diversity of plants and animals in
nature. One of the great natural reserves of the world, such as
the Icelander’s and today’s naturalist know that the basic task
of protecting Icelandic nature is far from finished –
discovering, describing, and protecting the species in Iceland.
But the present-day systematist is far more than an explorer and
cataloger; Olafsson is also an amatory biologist who tries to
explain both the evolutionary and the ecological place of
species in Icelandic nature.
Despite his high-tech tools, the modern naturalist still must
rely fundamentally on his powers of observation, description and
inference to perceive and portray nature’s reality. In
time-honoured scientific tradition, he paints his perceptions
with woods and his canvas is the printed page. But the
naturalist’s language is often so arcane that his portraits of
the Icelandic nature assume little real form save in the minds
of kindred scientists.
The artist, by contrast, has always perceived natural diversity
through another eye of the mind and painted his perceptions of
nature in the universal language of colour. His images, often
stylized or idealized, may be meticulously realistic or may
symbolize or distill some larger essence of the natural realm.
Such distillations can take on abstract or impressionistic form,
or the realism of a photographic portrait. National Museum of
Icelandic History, are storehouses for the naturalists’ immense
collections, providing essential documentation of their
discoveries.
These museums keep the catalogue of nature and the knowledge
we have acquired about the Icelandic's biological diversity.
Naturalists are the keepers of the keys to this catalogue and
this knowledge.
Only realist art can illuminate and authenticate the
naturalist’s word pictures of the rich diversity in nature. And
skillful scientific illustration, a specialized form of art
realism, has long been the indispensable servant of scientific
description. With the rise of modern photography, however, the
painter’s brush has frequently taken second place to the
photographer’s lens in the portrayal of the natural world. This
is lamentable in many instances because the eye of the artist
often sees nature’s reality quite differently from the eye of
the camera.
The camera, for instance, freezes but a moment in time and
space. Its image is slavishly faithful to its subject, with
focus fixed by the inflexible laws of optics, often giving us
shallow foreground without background or background without
foreground. The artist, however, can telescope time and space
with the conceptualizing lens of the mind; he can synthesize,
synchronize, and idealize nature’s images. The artist can
compose the essence of reality into synthetic visual wholes,
creating a differential or complete depth of focus that
deliberately sharpens the essential, relevant and pleasing
elements while obscuring or eliminating harsh and irrelevant
distractions.
Paintings of nature can also be far more effective than the
photographer’s pictures in depicting the often subtle features
that distinguish one species of animal or plant from another, or
in portraying a species in its habitat or larger ecological
setting. Perhaps most important of all, the gifted nature artist
can transform a panoramic landscape or a doorstep vignette into
a true portrait of nature with power and feeling, a grand
ecological synthesis that is at once an authoritative statement
of relationship and unity and an evocative message of priceless
heritage and higher human values. In this sense, the portrait
becomes a call to observation, compelling concern for the
environmental welfare of continents and oceans and spurring
action to preserve wilderness near and far.
Olafsson is at once naturalist, artist, teacher, and
conservationist. His camera-defying brush captures the reality
of nature with uncanny authenticity. He is a realist painter
because he knows through his own personal odyssey the
limitations of abstract and impressionist art for the artist who
wishes to portray what Olafsson calls the “particularity of
nature”. Nature’s diversity rarely assumes specific identity
merely through impressions or abstractions; this diversity
resolves itself into recognizable species and habitats only
through the proper comprehension and use of detail.
When Olafsson paints a species of bird or mammal, it must be
sufficiently detailed to be identifiable, without being so
feather- or fur-perfect that it stands apart from its setting as
a field-guide cameo. In his often elaborate settings, he uses
just enough detail to impart a sense of both scientific
authenticity and photographic fidelity. The background may
remain deliberately generic, sketched in only so far as it
authenticates the main focus of the painting.
Nature is a matter of focus and scale. On the grandest scale is
the planet Earth – a global landscape. When, as through some
cosmic zoom lens, the naturalist or the artist focuses on the
earth’s natural realm with increasing powers of magnification,
the global landscape assumes ecological fabric and texture in
ever greater detail, resolving itself into naturescapes and
habitats at all levels from oceans and continents to life-zones,
biomes, communities, and, ultimately, to the fine structure of
nature – individual species and local environments. On every
scale – structure and pattern. On every level – scientific
intrigue and artistic beauty.
Nature is also a matter of perspective and perception. From one
vantage point, the naturalist or the artist may survey the
ecological landscape and see individual species, habitats, or
interactions, while from another viewpoint nature appears only
as integrated communities or ecosystems of closely inter-related
organisms and environments. Still another may be fascinated by
process, by the rhythms and cycles of nature. Some dwell on the
continuities and revel in the familiar or the commonplace.
Others are absorbed in the rich diversity of life and are
magnetically drawn to wilderness and to arctic biotas. Some
become so sensitized to the rare and the unusual within the vast
matrix of habitats and living forms that they deliberately look
beyond nature’s hoi polloi to focus on the vanishing jewels.
These precious remnants, all too rapidly slipping over the brink
into extinction, are perceived as the epitome of the natural
realm, the very essence of what is worth keeping.
At one time or another, Olafsson has assumed each of these
viewpoints and his paintings reflect the full gamut of
perspectives and perceptions. As an artist he is able to convey
a vivid comprehension of diversity because, as naturalist, he
has mastered the particularity of nature.
Photo 45, Inside the exhibition |
