ART, APPARITIONS, LAND AND LIVES

Do you recognise these people? The faces are colourful and even though each has a distinct appearance they all look alike – and look like us. These are people on the street, inside their homes, in moving vehicles, family snapshots; apparitions.

From an early age Pálina was interested in taking photos of people, mainly portraits. The diversity and variety of the features caught her imagination and became inspiration for paintings. Since 1993 the artist has worked with faces, emphasising expression and expressing feelings through colours and pencils. The paintings are based on photographs of people who are (often) close to her, but the final picture is not necessarily similar to the model. Instead it is more of an emotional reaction to the photograph in the context of many other faces. Thus the paintings are not quite portrait, as defined by being a portrait of a named individual. Some of Pálína’s paintings are portraits of individuals, however, no names accompany the pictures (apart from references to family trees). For the artist it matters to know the model personally, or find a connection to her or him, and this emotional affinity is the foundation for the work process. Then it is the viewers to interpret the result, the painting, in a personal way and discern what is behind the mask. In the same way locations are important for the artist, sometimes personally, sometimes as a part of the thought process behind the works and exhibitions.

Colours is vitally important to Pálína’s art and she uses colours to manifest the emotional expression which is the second mainstay of her art. The expressionist characteristics of Pálína’s painted faces appear most clearly in the colours she uses. Colours have emotional significance different from language, words and sentences. Effective use of colours can capture the complex beauty found in the moment, the material and the colours themselves. The faces are colourful like the models, people with a range of experience, status and upbringing; these people are everywhere around, sometimes close, sometimes far away.

The features are often opaque, but can also be clear – some of the faces are introvert while others are challenging and demand eye contact. Sometimes the artist paints in fine strokes over a rich foundation, the colour of the faces melts partly into the background. In some cases the faces appear in rows, side by side or vertical. Other paintings are in strong expressive colours, mauve, orange, turquois. Some are watercolours, others painted with oil or acrylics, some are on paper, others on canvas. The forms of the faces and the features are shaped by colours and shadows, the watercolours appear more soft while the oils offer a more complex expression, often in the texture itself. The acrylics are dark and mystical, in fact a certain mysteriousness is a characteristic of the painted faces in general, the features are at the same time quiet, demanding and introspective. The paintings come in different sizes, the individual faces are usually small, but those that have many faces in rows are much larger.

Family and lifespan
The family tree is a continual inspiration for Pálína’s work. She has worked as a teacher in adult education for marginalised groups, doing projects relating to the family tree and setting. Subsequently she started using her own family history and genealogy in her art. In 2005 she painted series of family portraits and exhibited them on two different occasions. The first was titled “Family” and the second “Faces”.

In the exhibition “Rhythm” (2010) she continued working with genealogy and the idea of the rhythm of life. This exhibition was in connection with another one located in the farmhouse of Skeið in Svarfaðardalur, called “Housewives and daughters”. Pálína’s grandmother, Guðríður, and her parents, lived at Skeið. The artist has researched their families and reflects on how far back the feeling of kindred lasts. In these exhibitions the setting of the individual is portrayed and the people behind her or him, this, in turn may explain how different qualities and talents come from.

When Pálína was two years old she lived for two terms with her mother in the Home Economics School by Þórunnarstræti in Akureyri. Decades later, in 2011, she mounted an exhibition there together with Arna G. Valsdóttir, and continued her work with family history. She exhibited a book of drawings of her ancestresses from the mother’s line. They had leaves over their faces, numbering the generations between them and Pálína. The one who was eight generations away had eight leaves, and then the leaves were fewer as they got closer to Pálína. This same year Pálína took part in a group exhibition with four large paintings of faces, called “Students and summer work”. The paintings were modelled on photographs of the artist’s grandfathers and grandmothers. In them she attempted to express a feeling for their lives, their hard work and physical labours, as well as their longings and dreams. The exhibition was in the old factory in Hjalteyri, an important location for the setting of the works.

Also in this year Pálína created a visual presentation based on her father’s family, to the eighth generation, in the installation “Roots – Inheritance”. The exhibition was in two parts. In a dark windowless basement room rows of faces painted with acrylics on black paper were mounted on the walls. They appeared like masks or shadows of ancestors that life on in us and remind us of their presence. The setting, a dark and narrow space, was reminiscent of a tomb, inspired partly by Pálína’s recent experiences in a journey through Egypt, and partly by the fact that she did not know her father who died when she was five years old. The other part of the exhibition was in another room in the basement gallery, where an old wooden box stood, filled with dictionaries and books about languages and linguistics. This collection referred to the fact that the only thing Pálína inherited after her father and grandfather were two dictionaries – and also to the idea that her interest in learning languages and linguistics was passed down from them. Later, in 2012, the installation was exhibited again under the title “The Father”. This version was mainly based on ideas relating to the role and status of the father in people’s lives, and how life is with or without him as a ‘role model’. 

In 2012 Pálína mounted an exhibition in the library of the University of Akureyri, titled “Generations”. Here she focused on her mother’s side of the family, from in Víðiker in Bárðardal. Eight tall paintings leaned against the walls, painted in striking colours on wood blocks. The faces stand in vertical rows, usually four on each painting.

Also this same year Pálína turned to the mother, in the exhibition “Mother’s love”. 

Here she exhibited series of acrylic paintings and an artist book together with an old globe standing on the floor on a black cloth. The room was dark and visitors were offered flashlights to view the pictures. The title has two meanings, referring both to how mothers nurture their offspring and how the human race should nurture mother nature. Pálína examines her ancestresses and ancestors from the mother’s side for eight generations, wishing to remember those people, underlining the connections between generations and also to reflect on the different lives and possibilities they had compared to our society of excess and privilege. As an example of this difference Pálína pointed out that she has in her life had more dresses and skirts than all her ancestresses together.

Children were the subject of Pálína’s fourth exhibition in 2012. Located in the old children’s school at Skógar in Fnjóskadalur, the exhibition was titled “Compulsory education”. The paintings were based on old photographs of the children who had attended the school. They all have in common that they will have attended school at some point, and their education would be a benefit to some and difficult for others. As before the faces open up questions, this time relating to compulsory education, education in general and the thirst for knowledge. Another side of this is ignorance and short-sightedness that is as often as not present among the well informed.

Apparitions

Two large acrylic-paintings, 4mx73cm, were shown at the exhibition “Here and There”, in 2016. Both are paintings of faces. One of them shows people travelling on public transport, always going back and forth and often vary of their surroundings. The faces are in a row, they are of all ages and some are possibly no longer alive. The effect is that of waiting, in narrow enclosed spaces. The other painting is about refugees, pain, hardships and even death. It shows women covered in colours and materials, only the eyes are visible and possibly lips. They are hidden and are not supposed to be visible, whether at home before war broke out, or in the refugee camps tents.

Pálína followed upon this work a year later with the exhibition “Citizens”. Two types of work were on display, on the one hand 4 acrylic paintings on canvas, 160x60cm, from a series of ten paintings from the stay in Berlin in 2017. Each painting shows five faces and their looks are important as indicators of connections or lack of them, amongst themselves and in relation to the surroundings. The reference is to the fears and dangers of the urban life when traumatic events occur, such as terrorism and war. Another side of the story is to illustrate how people gather in groups, seeking comfort and security in each other’s company. The other part of the exhibition was a series of small acrylic paintings on paper showing simple faces surrounded by halos. The halo is related to old religious works, and also a reflections on life and death, sorrow and grief, and how people are judged by their actions in their final hours.

The title of the exhibition “Nation”, in Hrafnseyri við Arnarfjörð, refers to the 100 anniversary of Iceland‘s sovereignity in 2018. Three series of painted faces created over decade offered an evocative insight into Icelanders of all times, the nation of this country where life continually presents a broad scope of emotions and expressions, shaping the individuals.

Influences and surroundings

Another version of the faces is to examine the cosmic effect on the individual through astrology. These work rely largely on text, although it is always accompanied by a portrait. The works are a kind of installations, and Pálína uses astrology charts alongside personality descriptions that are written into the works. Here the artist joins together aspects relating to genetic inheritance and those connected to time and space, people’s situation as they appear ‘on earth’. Astrology and genealogy are ways to look at people both as a whole and as a part of a much more complicated system. The interest in linguistics also makes an appearnce, as Pálína has systematically analysed the various connections between language and visual arts.

Astrology was also used in the exhibition “Housewives and daughters”, a project Pálína did with the historian Kristín Þóra Kjartansdóttir, at the guesthouse Skeið í Svarfaðardal in 2009. The idea behind the exhibition was that their grandmothers had both lived at Skeið some hundred years ago, although not at the same time. These foremothers are the subject of the exhibition, as well as the current residents at the farm, a mother and a daughter. Pálína did astrological charts for these four women, mothers and daughters in the past and present and displayed them as portraits.

Public art is another way for Pálína to place faces in a specific surroundings, and provide them with context. In 2009 she participated in a group exhibition in the Akureyri Botanical Garden at an annual arts festival and painted a group of faces on a wall. The title, Flower-elves, refers to the flowers in the garden surrounding the painting. A year later Pálína organised a group exhibition and event together with Jóhann Thorarinsen horticulturist under the title “A Harvest of Growth and Art”. She painted four faces on the wall of a small shed standing beside the vegetable gardens, naming it The Four Winds. The project was located close to the old gardening centre in Krókbær in the old town of Akureyri. It was so successful that the artist was invited to participate in the NordMach cultural convention in Helsinki, and discuss the interrelations between art and employment. The project was repeated and expanded in 2012 when Akureyri celebrated 150 years of municipality.