Keith Grant

The Liverpool-born artist opens the doors to his Norwegian home studio. Words and photos: ANNE-KATRIN PURKISS

- Anne-katrin Purkiss

You’ve lived and worked in Norway for the past 18 years. What prompted you to move there?

From the age of 20, or even before that, I wanted to experience the North. I had a feeling for it which was infinitely stronger than following where most painters went: France.

What sparked that interest?

I grew up in Liverpool in the 1930s and being rather on my own as a child enabled me to see the aspects of nature associated with coastal scenery. The horizon meant something to me and the clouds, and where they came from. The winter, hail, snow… They always seemed to come from the North and they have become symbolic in my work ever since. I wanted to find some way of interpreting nature.

When did you first visit Norway?

I first came here in 1957, travelling with a student from the Royal Academy Schools to the Western Fjords. Three years later, I won a Norwegian government scholarship administered by the British Council. I went to the Kunstakademiet in Oslo for a month, and after that I spent seven months living and working in a fisherman’s hut. That experience was extraordinarily formative.

Which artists were influential on your work?

Firstly, Samuel Palmer and William Blake, particularly Blake’s illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy with the sea horizon and the strange sun, and the cliffs.