I came by the exhibition of Ketill Larsen by chance; I actually didn’t know that there is a new exhibition at City Hall.
At first I thought there were children’s pictures – the strokes were so wild and somewhat messy, the colours so fantastically bold. Then I noticed that composition is repeating itself over and over again in different colour palette. It looked like landscapes in different seasons – you can see the mountains and little houses here and there, the onion shaped roofs with crosses. Some of the drawings were inhabitant by whimsical, capricious, fantasy golden birds with long tales. The overall impression reminded me of folklore tales, naïve art.
I went to the adjoining café and asked a bartender if he knew something about the artist. As happens so often in Iceland he not only knew the artist but was a friend of his. He told me that artist would be at the exhibition in 20 minutes. While waiting, I Googled his name, Ketill Larsen. There was no mention of him on any of the art sites and the few sites that had his name were in Icelandic. All I gathered with my limited vocabulary of Icelandic was that he was born in Reykjavik, was in his late sixties, played the role of Santa Claus during Christmas celebrations, was an actor by education, worked with kids and had the peculiar habit of writing notes on his hand. A French journalist happened to sit nearby and during our brief interaction she mentioned that a documentary was shot of him by Joseph Marzolla and Tomas Lemarquis and it will open on the 16th of March.
The artist came in. He was short and stout, with a high forehead and receding hairline, and he leaned heavily on a cane. His disheveled beard and apparent indifference to his own appearance seemed out of place or out of modern time, but his ancient eyes sparkled with lively curiosity and he obviously was in high spirits. As soon as we sat down for a talk at the table in his exhibition hall it became obvious how utterly unconventional he is. He kept breaking into little songs and stories of fantastic ships from outer space; it was close to impossible to get a straight answer even on such a straightforward question as when he was born. But along with this a certain magic started to appear – people kept coming in the hall, seemingly just to greet him. Everyone of them was joining us at the table and sharing their memories of Ketill Larsen, mentioning what a wonderful person he was, what a joy it was to be around him. Through their words a mystical figure started to emerge, a well-loved story teller; an eccentric artist; a person whose fantastic stories became indivisible from his own life. (In the following days I asked different people about Ketill, and every time a warm smile appeared on their faces with “Oh, Ketill” followed by yet another colourful story).
I steered conversation back to his drawings and found out that he started painting in his thirties without any formal training. “The drawings just came to me. When time comes they spill out of my hand. I can talk to you and draw; I can do anything and draw.” Through the years he has had numerous exhibitions in Iceland and also shown his work in Denmark, Italy, the Faroese and Africa. The magical landscapes are the staple of his of his work, the “tales from a different world” as he calls them.
