Elenor Martinsen: "New Patterns"-paintings

Elenor Martinsen’s first solo exhibition in London is a tonic for troubled times. The artworks have a balanced, melodic feel - like painterly lullabies to soothe the soul. Drawing inspiration from her Nordic roots and international travels, Elenor imbues her work with the gentle and nurturing influence of the Moon.

The use of silk fibre in ‘Moon Longing’ and ‘Over The Moon’ add a physical dimension to her technique. Acrylic paint settles on the fibres suggesting a soft yet timeless appeal. Whilst silk – and at that, silk worms – have been used by artists to allude to the night and to sleep, the link here is dominant. We consider the patterns of the Moon, its cycle of crescent shapes and segments, its ability to vanish and then ride in front of the Sun, obscuring the light of day as witnessed during the recent eclipse. Elenor’s moons are full, perfect discs of wonder, generous circles of nocturne luminescence beaming above slants of bare linen angled as though rooftops or mountain slopes. The realm of the heavenly seems within our earthly reach.

A mysterious narrative is suggested in the three pastel-blue canvases of ‘Connecting’. A landscape seems to thread its way across the tryptic, as though a pattern of paint. Likewise, in ‘Go With The Flow’ we see simplified hills and rocks, evocative of the artist’s native Norway, stretching across a pink horizon line - though captured here on a scale and with a sensitivity that exudes a feeling of preciousness. An avid wild swimmer and walker, Elenor welcomes us to a secret place of her own making.

Sensitive profiles of the land are rendered with crisp straight lines, influenced by Agnes Martin’s sense of stillness. This certainly follows on in the larger painting ‘Peace and Hope.’ Precise horizontal lines are joined by light washes of grey punctuated by subtle nuances and vertical flashes of white, like partially submerged navigation markers. The landscape’s flowing forms sit like islands jutting up out of calm waters, embracing the sky as they kiss the water’s edge.

These sleeping forms and shapes of restraint seem tucked up for slumber.

Are these shorelines sleeping in the stillness? Do landscapes dream?

The golden moon at the heart of ‘I ng Og Ne’ silently shimmers between two peaks, like the tiny stars just visible betwixt the snowy altitudes of Harald Sohlberg’s ‘Winter Night In The Mountain’ – a jewel of Norway’s National Museum, exhibited several years ago in Dulwich. In Elenor’s painting the Moon takes on a similar magnetic presence. It seems to have settled in its central position, a guardian watching over the blue-swathed mountaintops.

In each work, the moon itself becomes part of the landscape. Devoid of human interference in their abstract nature, these landscapes seem almost lonely. Yet this produces a purity echoing the presence of the Moon itself.

In ‘The Way Home, New Patterns’ the moon has become blue, as if to signify an exceptionally rare occasion – once in a Blue Moon – or an anomaly in a pattern. This hovering sphere of swirling topaz glimmers like glass salvaged from the sea, or perhaps a beautiful gemstone - the famous Hope Diamond necklace, here adorning the horizon’s neck. This crystalline sphere becomes our planet - the blue planet, nestled in the peaceful galaxy of Elenor’s calm palette and gentle brush. Painted by the artist soon after a trip to Brazil, flying across the open expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, the title may recall Elenor’s own feelings of returning home.

The delicate ‘Y’ shapes in the work signify new growth and prosperity. A symbolic reference perhaps to the time the artist spent in the north of Norway accompanying the Sami people charting reindeer tracks, or even a reference to the embroidered threads of the mothers of Russian soldiers, silenced against their will. ‘The Way Home’ may therefore be a work dedicated to those uprooted by war, climate change and natural disaster.

In these works of deceptive simplicity Elenor herself has reached for the Moon. For its comforting presence and wizened illumination through the darkness of illness and despair. Elenor invites us to adopt new ways of looking, new ways of thinking. She encourages us to develop ‘New Patterns’ as a new form of living. Living softly - like the Moon’s quiet luminescence - to navigate the uncertain and the unknown with peace.

By Belinda Smith

Artist & Writer, Founder of Pendour

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