Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir's paintings mimic art, not nature. This is not said as a criticism and it applies to all contemporary art. This has in fact been true ever since Vasari declared late in the sixteenth century that since Michelangelo art has copied not nature, but art itself. The imagery dealt with itself and style became the key to creation. Thus art became an independent language and its relations to reality were far more complex than what is implied by sheer mimicry. This is not to say that style replaces the meaning in art, but that it becomes the framework for its creation. Creative art does not aim to create a style, but rather to disrupt it and discover new premises, a new dialogue and a new framework.

From “On mimesis and metaphor”, text on Gudrun

Kristjansdottir's paintings by Olafur Gislason, art critic and philosopher

In other works she narrows her angle to tackle the proximity of the mountain, the mountainside. The tension between closeness and distance - of the mountainside and the mountain - is an underlying basic theme in Gudrun Kristjansdottir's works. In closeness dwells the recollection of distance, the mountainside is without beginning or end. Spring on a rocky mountain, sporadic white snowdrifts on the dark slope. The white forms of the snow in a dynamic, tense relationship with the dark sward of the mountain.
In her most recent works, she strikes a new chord. Fog creeps around the mountain, the forms lose their sharpness, the light is ambiguous and an atmosphere of mysticism reigns. She explains this process more closely in her video work "Fog", an ode to the dynamic, ever-changing moment. Living nature is never static, transformation is inherent to it. Each moment is unique - subject to the whims of time, of the seasons, of the weather and of the light.

Kristin Gudnadottir Art critic, head of ASI Museum, Iceland