Iceland Series

As has been stated (Landscapes of Marginality) in most societies there exists a distinction between the periphery and the core, subsumed and expanded in the paradigm of marginality.

Iceland exemplifies most of these notions. Unquestionably marginal geographically, in relation to metropolitan Europe and northern America. Marginal also in the uncompromising nature of its natural environment, oft characterised as the land of ice and fire. Socially and economically too it has been for much of its history a peripheral territory under Danish domination.

"The well-rooted image of Iceland's pre-modern human ecology is of a population struggling to survive in an inhospitable environment pursuing European style farming too near the arctic and in proximity to some highly active volcanoes, always on the margin of survival"

"It has been a thousand year struggle against ice and fire and a millennium of misery in a beautiful nightmare of a place."

With regard to societal marginality, the emphasis is placed on an understanding of the underlying causes of exclusion, inequality, social injustice and spatial segregation of people. It can be argued that in the pre-modern history of Iceland such exclusion was a feature of the 17th, 18th and first part of the 19th centuries.

The intention of the works here is to convey through the medium of landscape painting some aspects of both spatial and socio-economic marginality as they are manifest in the contemporary landscapes of Iceland