This work is a continuation of the series that started with the ‘Reflections’ self portrait. It is taken from a series of photos of a trip to Norway to see the Northern Lights.

Looking out from the restaurant across the harbour in Tromsö, the Northern Lights appeared on the horizon. The human eye sees the lights differently to the camera. When I saw the lights they were white and very pale green and occasionally pale pink. The camera sees the lights as green. That’s what we expect to see when we first see them. It's a shock to see them as wispy and white. I realised that it was exactly like our reflection. We can never see us as we really are. Every image we see of ourselves is always a reflected image. The windows in the restaurant were triple glazed, Norway is cold! That made the challenge of working out the layers of the work a lot more complicated.

The challenge of paintings like this is to show the difference between all the layers of reflections while also having the painting make sense as a single object. This is what makes this series so interesting to work on for an artist.

69.64N 18.95E 76.5×60cm oil on canvas

Details from 69.64N 18.95E

This painting was shortlisted for the Herbert Smith Freemills Kramer Portrait prize