An acclaimed artist with Sefton links whose work celebrates the wonder of the natural world is opening a new exhibition at The Atkinson in Southport this December.
Keith Grant: Elemental Nature will open on Saturday, 14th December 2024, and will run to 5th March 2025. Admission is free.
The Atkinson owns two of his paintings and this exhibition builds on the fact that Keith’s earliest years were spent near Southport.
Indeed he studied at Bootle School of Art and held his first exhibition as a professional artist in Bootle. He has gone on to become a painter of international reputation, but he has never forgotten his roots.
This exhibition pays tribute to his life’s achievement with some paintings and a group of fascinating working drawings, made over the last 70 years.
This is his first showing in a British public gallery since his retrospective at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 1994.
Keith was born in Liverpool in August 1930, grew up on Merseyside after being fostered and later adopted. Educated at Roberts County Primary School, Orrell, and Bootle Grammar School for Boys. He developed a strong connection to the region.
His artistic journey began with evening classes at Bootle School of Art, where his talent flourished. After completing National Service, he moved to London in 1950 to further his art career. Despite relocating, his ties to Merseyside remained profound, as reflected in his choice of Bootle for his first-ever painting exhibition in 1955, underscoring the area’s formative influence on his life.
In London he exhibited initially at the New Art Centre and began to explore his passion for the lands of the north, in particular Norway and Iceland. But his fascination with the natural world also took him to the tropics and the desert, and he painted the rainforest as well as icebergs, glaciers, and volcanoes. His intense response to landscape has resulted in paintings of great dynamism, all constructed with his characteristic blend of observation and imaginative interpretation, employing a vivid palette and deep love and appreciation of the natural world.
Grant moved to Norway in 1996, where he is still painting with vigour and authority and producing some of the finest work of his career.
Perhaps best-known for his paintings of the Arctic and Antarctic, for landscapes of ice and for memorable depictions of the aurora borealis, Grant has also painted extensively in Britain and France. One recent series explored the landscape of Gilbert White’s Selborne, another the area around Grez-sur-Loing where the composer Delius lived.
The Atkinson has two paintings by Grant in its permanent collection: View from the Bedroom Window (c.1953), transferred from Bootle Art Gallery in the 1970s and one of the first paintings of Grant’s to be acquired by a public institution, and Cosmos (1993), recently gifted to The Atkinson.
These will be joined by paintings generously loaned from UK public and private collections in a celebration of Keith Grant’s work which spans some 70 years.
This is the first major public exhibition of his work for 30 years, since his last retrospective in 1994 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Grant has exhibited all over the UK as well as in Italy, Iceland, Norway, France, Luxembourg and Belgium.
His work is about the places in which he lives and those to which he travels but is not a mere visual record of his journeys.
Grant draws his inspiration from nature, but he is keenly aware of the history of human thought and cultural achievement. His paintings are informed by poetry, music and myth, and by an appreciation of architecture.
His portraits of key individuals (such as the distinguished archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes, included in this exhibition) affirm his humanist sympathies, but he is not uncritical of the way the planet has been exploited.
Grant’s paintings summon up the spirit of place with understanding and compassion and make an eloquent appeal for us to take more responsibility for our beautiful environment.
Accompanying the exhibition, and illustrating many of the exhibits, is the recent monograph on the artist by Dr Judith LeGrove.
Keith Grant is published by Lund Humphries and sells for £40.
Keith Grant: Elemental Nature
14 December 2024 – 5 March 2025
theatkinson.co.uk/exhibition/keith-grant
Free Entry. Monday – Saturday. 10am – 4pm.
Closed Sundays & Bank Holidays.
Closed for Christmas shutdown 24 December 2024 – 1 January 2025.
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