Northland - 3

Cloud, fog, horizon, island, ice, extraction, subsea, unseen, miasmarine 13 x 19 acrylic and graphite on paper

The above image could serve as a visual "summary" of my time in the Arctic in the Fall of 2017.  It was very silent September listening to the sound of mountains disassembling in Svalbard, Norway, followed by an inward-turned October at the Herhusið residency in North Iceland.  (See previous Northland posts from the Arctic here and here.)

The work on paper that I made in September and October are the first glimmers of an arctic imaginary that is slowly taking shape. I'm thinking about how we see nature and how nature is represented in our cultural environmental imaginary.  I'm thinking about the role of the visual in our lives. I am asking how a visual image can affect the way we attend to nature, or how the visual can help forge a deeper connection to nature. My work also reflects musings on unseen things, how they loom in the imagination and color our perception of reality.  Through drawings, words, memories and imaginings, Northland documents my process of attending to nature, of “seeing” nature, and responding. That process inevitably becomes a form of self-examination. We are all deeply entangled with nature.

I am currently settling back into a studio routine, at home in Philadelphia, after a lovely, long spate of holiday and family gatherings. Needless to say it's a very different pace of working. Slower... but new work is underway.  Here is a shot of the studio in North Iceland with the red flags (see this post for more on those) that I brought with me from Philadelphia along with new works in progress.

Northland images at Herhusid. The three red, white, and black flags re-imagine the flag of Greenland.