Art in the Arctic

June 28th - July 7th 2018

The highlights were many, and working with the other artists was a great experience.  But the polar bear encounters were many and varied - and absolutely wonderful.

From a large male on the shoreline framed by the dark slopes of scree beyond, to a female with two cubs resting and sleeping for most of the hours we watched.

From a young male swimming far out at sea a considerable distance from the the ice front, to another young male constantly checking the breeze while he watched a distant female working her way upwind around an ice-jammed bay.

Back in the studio I looked again through the sketches made when watching a male polar bear swimming between ice floes.  It was a long way from the ice front paddling powerfully at sea, and as it came closer looking down I could see the animal's fur streaming out and flowing around the powerful underlying shape of the bear.  Its colour, and the bear's movements so clearly visible beneath the surface of the deeply turquoise sea made such an impression I thought a way to emphasize the experience was to work on an intaglio print. 

The method would allow for unpredictable expressive marks and using card for the layered colours around the bear would hold back on getting too bogged down in detail.