An artist who used to live on Sheppey before moving to Iceland is holding her first solo exhibition in her new home.

Louise Harris taught at the former Cheyne Middle School in Sheerness when she first qualified as a teacher and, after gaining a masters degree, went to St George’s.

She now lives in Reykjavik with her husband, Stephen, 12-year-old son, Boyd, and twins Ida and Elis, nine, where she still teaches art and also paints.

The 47-year-old said: “My husband is half Icelandic and he was teaching in London.

“We fancied a change and we came over here, initially for a year.

“I have my first solo exhibition since I moved here pregnant with twins and I already had a two-year-old so I was pretty busy for the first few years learning Icelandic.”

She said the country’s population is only 300,000 which means there is absolutely no traffic, something that came as a welcome surprise to someone who has experienced London’s roads.

She said: “Reykjavik is a very lovely city with lots of art music and cultural things to do which is good for me and Stephen.

“But you can also drive five to 10 minutes and you are somewhere completely remote.

“It’s cold, it’s two degrees, but it’s bright sunshine.

“The Icelanders say: ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, it’s just the wrong clothes’, so everyone goes outside all the time. The kids go out no matter what.”

She added there is a statistic that says the country gets
more sunshine than Florida and in June it has 24 hours of daylight.

Mrs Harris’s work mainly consists of paintings of women’s faces that “hover between reality and distortion”, but she also uses textiles and creates art installations with sound.

Her exhibition is in a gallery called Studio Stafn.

Its title is Útlensk kona málar vatnslitamyndir, which translates as foreign woman paints watercolour paintings.

“It’s a very literal language,” she said.