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Antarctica:
Cape Bird Images
Images
are below click here
In July1998
I learned that my application to the Artists To Antarctica
Scheme had been successful. I was going to travel to Antarctica
with Margaret Mahy. Antarctica has always held a fascination
for me a landscape of pure form. In retrospect painting for
me has been an attempt to reduce a landscape to its essentials.
Sitting
out on the Ross Ice Shelf, drawing Mount Erebus, I realized
it looked deceptively close because the seemingly endless
plain of Ice surrounding it giving no indicators as to scale.
It was then that I really became aware of the strangeness
of the place. What is most significant is absence, not so
much what is there but what isn't. Margaret & I had a discussion
about the subtle variations of colour in a landscape of snow
and ice. In fact very little of it was pure white, for example,
the Ross Ice Shelf was a sort of muddy reddish grey.
The following
day we flew in a helicopter to Cape Bird an environment of
ice cliffs, glaciers, volcanic forms and penguins. The drawings
I produced there form the basis for a series of works for
exhibition. The thick layer of ice flowing over raised land
produces a distinctive dome shape, ,which was usually visible
in the Cape Bird landscape. The play of light upon this made
the boundary between land and sky ambiguous. This curvilinear
shape constantly recurs in many of my Antarctic paintings.
The jagged and sinister tooth like forms of the pack ice thrown
against the shore which formed a boundary between sea and
land, made an interesting contrast. I have been exploring
the tensions this creates, a fluid landscape with cutting
edges.
Click
on the images below to view full image - please note larger
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"A
Day At
The Beach" |
"Collision
Zone " |
"Eroded
Ice
Formations
Cape Bird" |
"Fluid
Zones" |
"Framed
View " |
"From
Cape Bird 1" |
"From
Cape Bird 2" |
"Ice
Formations" |
"Layered
Landscape" |
"Realm
Of The
Snow Queen" |
"Skeletal
Structures" |
"The
Journey
Phase 1" |
"The
Journey
Phase 3" |
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