Skagaströnd Iceland
NES Artist in Residence November & December 2023
Its late October 2023
I traveled to Iceland in autumn with two medium sized suitcases and a heavy dose of anxiety. It was my first time in Iceland. I had turned 40 this year and had never traveled this far, alone, and for what would knowingly be a very extended period of time.
The last few years have been riddled with change, all clustered into a chunk of time that felt like a lifetime. Eviction, pandemic, isolation, death, and tragedy. How easy to dismiss these things as part of the human experience, but when they come for you and you are unprepared, the lessons are never clear until much later, if at all.
I began my journey in Reykjavík, a city that holds about a third of Icelands entire population. I spent some time in museums and galleries and walking around. Being a tourist didn’t come naturally to me, especially since my visit to this beautiful country was not for tourism or a vacation, but to attend an artist residency in a small and very remote village called Skagaströnd.
“Much like nature, life is very often working in our favour, even when it seems like we are being faced with adversity, discomfort, and change. Just as a mountain is formed, when two sections of the ground are forced against each other, your mountain arose out of coexisting but conflicting needs.
Your mountain requires you to reconcile two parts of you: the conscious and the unconscious, the part of you that is aware of what you want and the part of you that is not aware of why you are still holding yourself back.”
— ‘The Mountain Is You” by Brianna Wiest (a book I started on this trip and never finished)
Shortly after arriving in Iceland, I was invited to a dinner party at Jasa Bakas apartment. Having only met online, or perhaps once or twice in passing in Montreal long ago, she generously opened her home to me to meet her friends/fellow artists who lived and worked in Reykjavík. During dinner, I was invited to participate in a three day workshop led by Veronica Brovall at Flædi Ceramic Studio in Hafnarhús. I don’t normally work with clay, but this felt like a unique opportunity to get my hands dirty and dive into the creative process.
I was only able to attend 2 of the 3 day workshop since I would leave for Skagaströnd on November 1st, the last day of the workshops. The works created in these workshops were then displayed in Veronica’s “Pressure Point” exhibit that ran 03.11 – 30.11 2023 at Annabelle’s Home. Additional works by: Jasa Baka, Nicole Aline Legault (me), Martyna Daniel, Victoria Björk, Anna Friða Jónsdóttir, Annabelle von Girsewald, and Gunnar Anton Auðmundsson.
On my last day in Reykjavík I finally went to one of the geothermally heated outdoor swimming pools, Vesturbæjarlaug. Everyone showers nude in front of everyone in the locker rooms here, something I never thought I would ever be able to do, but I did. If you don’t shower naked, its considered extremely rude and dirty. The hot pots were so lovely and had different temperatures displayed so you could choose which heat you wanted. Adjacent to the hot pots was a heated swimming pool to do laps. I had the whole lane to myself and floated leisurely on my back up and down the lane; staring at the velvety dark sky. The white lights reflecting off the bright teal pool and glowing in my peripheral made the whole experience feel so serene. Little flags strung over the pool spared me any unexpected collisions with the wall. I would later learn how important these pools are to Iceland, and how deeply embedded they are in their culture. I took the bus back to my hotel and was informed the aurora had appeared in the sky on my way home, but I had missed it.
The following day, I left for Skagaströnd. My taxi driver drove a Tesla (There are a lot of electric cars in Iceland) and I had no idea how to get in because of the flush door handles. I arrived at the bus station and found the #57 and nervously waited. I stared at the bus schedule with tears in my eyes, convinced I was at the wrong stop for the wrong time. A little while later, a kind looking woman rolled up to the same stop. We quickly realized we were going to the same place and she reassured me I was at the right stop. I cried a bit from the relief and we hugged. This was how I first encountered Kendra, one of the other artists I would be living with for the next two months. In fact, the only other person who was there for a two month stay and not just one. She was kind, chatty, and a very calming presence in this moment. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that first encounter meeting her.
We transferred in Blönduós and took the shuttle with two other artists who had been on the bus with us. Esra and Celeste. We were greeted by Vicki, the director of NES. She showed us around and then let us loose in the town.
The 1st of November felt like a strange collision of coincidences. On the same day, my friend Françoise died of cancer back home in NB. It was expected, but still really quite sad. We were merely acquaintances prior to crossing paths out in Grand Barachois a couple of years ago. We only truly connected around a bonfire at dusk by the ocean back in 2021/22. We spoke of life, illness, facing death, art… and we shed some tears. When I saw her briefly this summer she was so full of hope after what seemed like a miraculous moment in her healing. She spoke of travel, of finding ways to live again, and all the things she wanted to do. We talked about traveling together. She had so much light behind her eyes. Such a contrast from when we first connected. She longed to get back into her art, but her battle with cancer would take 10 years of her life away, before it finally took the rest. She was stoked for me to be going on this trip. I saw her in the sunset that evening and took a photo. I printed it out on a black and white printer and hung it in my space for the entire two months. I moved it to another wall when I left where I think it will remain for a while yet.
Letters from the great beyond
Another coincidence on that first day requires a bit of context.
If you know me, you might already know this story. My dad is Canadian, my mom is/was American. My parents met at Club Med in Guadeloupe in 1980 and spent one week together in the sun. They courted long distance for a few months until my dad called her on the phone and asked her to marry him because he was leaving for the Arctic soon for his job (marine biologist for DFO) and wanted her to come with him. She said yes, they got hitched and moved to the Arctic where they spent their first year of marriage in an isolated research camp just north of Chesterfield Inlet.
Growing up, I didn’t know my grandmother Betty very well. We lived a country apart and I sometimes saw her in the summer when we would travel south to visit family. She didn’t seem to like kids as much as my grandfather and we gravitated more toward him as young people. I grew closer to her as we both got older. My grandfather would later develop dementia and had to be moved to a facility with more care. My grandmother would try to go and see him every day but it was difficult with her mobility issues. She felt very guilty and her mental health started to suffer, so she began visiting Canada to stay with my parents for extended periods of time. It gave the family down south a bit of a break from being concerned with her loneliness and I think these trips would help her prepare for what it would be like to be without him, despite how difficult it was.
Being self employed, I was able to take time off during her visits and travel east to spend time with her and my parents in their round house nestled on the coast near the ocean in New Brunswick. I got to know my grandmother so well during those years. We shared the upstairs and a bathroom and it almost felt like we were roommates. Since I could work remotely at times, I was able to also spend long periods of time out there. She once told me, “if we had been born in the same time, we would have been great friends”. I told her we already were. I feel lucky to have known her. She always encouraged me to travel, but I never did.
I applied for grants for this residency and was unsuccessful. Without funding, I wasn’t sure how I would afford this trip. When my grandmother passed in 2021, there was some money left to her remaining children. It had taken a while for the money to get distributed, but in mid August 2023, the cheque arrived and my mother generously offered most of it to me for this journey. Something my grandmother would have wanted and oddly almost the exact amount matching my grant application budget (exchange rate aside). Truly one of the biggest blessings that has ever befallen me.
Once the other artists and I were set free in Skagaströnd, I called my parents to let them know I’d arrived. They had just come home from a walk to the mailbox and randomly received two letters from the Library of Congress. (My mother is legally blind and has been receiving audiobooks from the Library of Congress since she was diagnosed with Stargardt’s Disease at the age of 18. 52 years later, she still orders them from there, so they had her current address). The letters had been written in 1980 by my grandmother. I don’t know if they had been clearing out their files and thought perhaps my mother would like to have these letters as a keepsake, but if this wasn’t a serendipitous polar north sign that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, I don’t know what is. It felt like a wink from the grave.
Halló from the lava fields where the horses and ravens roam
I haven’t really created art just for the sake of making art since the early 2000s. Theres always been a reason, a product, or a job to fulfill. I love what I do, I love working with other artists and people, but for the first time in a long time I felt free. Free to be inspired, free to wake up every day and simply create without expectation. It was such a beautiful reminder as to why artists are compelled to create, and I think I really needed that. Still hard to believe this was my life for two months, as I sit here writing about it.
I worried I wouldn’t know what to do with myself, that I had forgotten how to draw, but that faded away very quickly. I spent the first bit of time wandering the landscape, taking pictures, painting whales (of course) and oceans and mountains, and daydreaming about when I would see the northern lights for the first time. It was funny to paint whales here, and I didn’t paint many. It almost felt like maybe the whales had led me here and now I could let them go.
My studio space was so large compared to what I have at home. I felt like I could breathe. There was so much room to grow outward instead of feeling so inward and cluttered all the time. I am so used to working in a small space (what should be my living room). Over the years, my work continued to get smaller so it would be more manageable and I could fit it on my scanner and share it easily online. Its exhausting to make yourself smaller in the world while also trying to be seen.
It was both uncomfortable and wonderful to share space with others. I was living in a house with 4 other women and I was surprisingly completely at ease. Perhaps knowing it was temporary made it easier somehow, or maybe, simply, I had changed.
As we settled into our life up North, the earthquakes in the south of the country were getting worse. Between late October and early November, almost 20,000 earthquakes had been recorded just north of a small fishing town called Grindavík. By November 10th, that town had to be evacuated and almost 4000 people were displaced from their homes. Massive cracks in the earth started to snake through the town and lift the ground 1-2 meters. It was (and still is) a potentially devastating situation for residents. In the most recent update, they said that the town may be at risk of “crack collapse” – meaning that the ground below Grindavík is so unstable now, that it could collapse.
I had never given much thought to volcanoes until I came to Iceland. I didn’t know much about them, but because of the frequent updates about the rumblings in the south, I began watching films about volcanoes and became so fascinated with them. A force of nature unlike anything else. It was quite a day when I realized the fields I had been walking on were former lava fields that were now just covered with moss, grass, and snow.
I saw many auroras during my time in Skagaströnd. The first time was on November 8th. Kathryn picked me up at the studio and we drove to a dark part of town and watched it spill over the mountain. It was spectacular. It reached across the sky, over our heads directly above us, and continued to the ocean beyond the horizon. What an intensely magical phenomenon to witness. No wonder we created so much mythology around nature before we understood the science behind it. We are all so deeply connected to each other and nature. We are intertwined throughout the universe. I don’t know what lessons I am here to learn in this life, but I do know that part of it is translating the conscious, the physical, and the subconscious world I experience. I thought of my ancestors and all the support and work that led me to this moment. Esra also saw the lights that night for the first time. It was really special to share that with someone else on the same day. The following morning I saw Venus nestled under a crescent moon.
The last time I saw the northern lights was December 17th, one day before the first eruption in the Reykjanes peninsula. It was mild enough outside to be comfortable bundled up while tolerating the powerful wind (something you grow accustomed to on a peninsula). Much of the snow had melted and the ground was dry. They sky opened up and the Gods danced above in the vast open space. I laid on my back in the grass and cried.
Gifts from the sea and sky
Every day we lost 15 minutes of light. When it was light outside, it always felt like an endless sunrise or sunset because the sun just hovered above the horizon when it was out. It may have been darker up there but the colours from the low sun were breathtaking. I don’t really mind the darkness though, I would live like this all year round.
The beaches were full of rocks and sea urchin shells and other delightful offerings from the sea. I spent hours staring at the ground as I walked, touching everything and feeling the earth. I don’t know quite know how to describe why. I want to say it feels like you can feel the history of the land there. Even the horses felt ancestral – and they are! Icelandic horses are very unique and have been protected here for over a thousand years (!) They have a very gentle temperament and are so beautiful. They have short legs and a broad stocky build. I related to them physically and spiritually:)
Quiet Stories from the North
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. This trip was so formative for me so its hard to keep it short. I haven’t really travelled much and I don’t share my life through writing and often struggle to write about myself. Like many visual creatives, we pour ourselves into a different form of expression. Most of my art is a direct translation of how I see and feel in the world. I feel like I am constantly in some sort of endless cinematic surreal tale; that life is a play and I am an extra in a story about someone else. Maybe we all feel this way sometimes.
For me, life often feels like a very heightened daydream. I think this is why so much of my work exaggerates the beauty I see and feel around me and why I place a lone silhouette in these landscapes because it could be any one of us. I almost never plan out my artwork nor do I keep a sketchbook, likely because most of my work is photo based first – so it kind of feels like my photos are the sketches for the final pieces. Sometimes I’ll only need a piece of an image to start painting or I will paint the entire photo. It often changes drastically during the work, but you can definitely find my references in the thousands of photos I’ve taken over the years.
Watercolours
I left Iceland with more than 20 paintings in various stages of completion. Painting with watercolour helps me feel even more connected to the art and the subject matter I so often paint. I feel at one with my tools. Water is life; in life, and in art.
Stop Motion Animation
As my other paper dwindled down, I noticed this other pad of paper I was ready to start using was far too thin for the way I work. I had brought a small light table with me and could see through at least three layers of paper, so I had this ambitious idea that I would try to make a stop motion. I cut the paper into smaller pieces and painted 88 frames and then photographed them in an attempt to make a looping animation of a whale turning into Spákonufell. I didn’t quite have time to finish it while I was there as painting each frame is quite a lengthy process. Click on the video if its not playing.
I showed an art class in Sauðárkrókur some of my watercolours and the stop motion I had been working on and how I combined my watercolours with digital artwork in procreate. We ran out of time before we could do anything meaningful with the work, but it was a good experience nonetheless. Kids here call their teacher by name – it was an interesting dynamic to witness. Instead of demanding respect from adults by using contractions, there seems to be more of a mutual respect between the child and the teacher.
North American Aurora
Bjarmanes planned to be open for a Christmas party and they allowed us to hang our work for a little pop up exhibit. The venue used to be the towns police headquarters with a small jail in the basement, but was now used as a charming social venue that opens on special occasions. On most Wednesdays they opened up and served alcohol and snacks and there were usually women sitting together knitting. We went there a few times to have drinks, hear music, or play cards.
The crowd was small until a bus rolled in and let out a large group of locals. It was a lively evening and was really great to show the work publicly and talk to people about it. As the evening rolled on, there was one man getting a bit rough with people. He was a larger man, very drunk, and stomping around shaking the whole building. He got his wish and was later involved in a very swift but violent fight that brought down curtains, broke tables, glasses, and chairs, and just grazed my artwork on the wall until the two men were separated. He was tended to in the corner on a chair, new drink in hand, with his head and ear bleeding from being hit with a thick glass that broke on impact. Apparently he got 8 stitches and was in rehab a week later.
A humbling experience, where romanticizing Iceland comes to a bit of a halt and reality sets in. Theres a long history of consumption in Iceland, years of prohibition and trade that parallel all the ways that people cope while living in a remote and often harsh environment. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful night that ended with quite a bang.
Nearing The End
12/25/2023 14h33
I took a walk at sunset on Christmas day filled with immense and overwhelming gratitude. Only a few days were left before I would reverse my journey from the north and go back to Reykjavík. I didn’t want to leave, but the time had come. My roommate said to me, “don’t be sad, this isn’t the end, its simply the start of something new”.
I carried a small handful of ashes with me to the shoreline and released them into the wind. I thanked my grandmother for being with me on this trip and for the money that allowed me to come to this place that only existed as a result of her physical departure from this earth. I held space for her memory in that moment, despite thinking of her often, and I let her go.
There is more to write about,
I wrote about all the people I lived with and my last 13 days in Reykjavík,
but it will have to wait. I need to take a break.
Eruption
Departure
Reykjavík / Jökulsárlón / Diamond
Galleries
Below are the 11 artists I met during my time at NES
Thank you
A sincere thank you to everyone who has been supporting me and continues to support the work that I do. Many of you have been incredibly generous throughout the years and I could not have pursued this as a career had it not been for the massive financial and emotional support from people like you. Thank you for paying attention to my life and my art. Its truly my honour to share with you.
Nicole Aline Legault 