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Justine Kerr is a Scottish artist living and working in Nova Scotia, Canada. She works in stone, felt and mixed media drawings. She studied Fine Art at the University of Dundee, specializing in sculpture at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, completing her degree in 1998 with two children in tow.
Justine chose to attend NSCAD in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on an exchange programme in 1994 where she stayed and blossomed for two semesters. This was to have a profound impact on this young artist as this was where she met her future husband and also where she first carved Italian marble. Justine was in utopia and found her true calling in life as a stone carver.
Justine has been inspired by her daughter Jura, who attended the South Shore Waldorf School where children learn the craft of felting and making woollen dolls with fleece. Drawn to the beautiful, vibrant colours of the fleece, Justine started creating felt pictures in the spring of 2005. She loves the physicality and tactile quality of fleece as well as the colours which stir her heart, creating joy within.
She layers the colours to create a rich depth, evoking a sense of three-dimensionality, similar to working in oil pastels. She uses a felting needle to pin down the form initially. She then water-felts the piece, a process which reinforces the fusion of the fibres, creating a more stable, permanent structure. Justine uses fine quality, synthetic procion dyes and also collects local plants in the summer for natural dyes.
She loves the contrast of working in soft sheep's wool with hard stone carving. She finds that they create an equilibrium: felting and drawing are less intense, faster, more immediate and lighter while, in contrast, working the stone has a more meditative quality; it is slower, much more physically demanding and therefore more intense.
The Nova Scotia Art Bank purchased her art work for its collection in the spring of 2006.
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