Lucia deLeiris

Newport's Ocean Drive

2009-09-10T04:24:00.000-07:00

This was a small oil painting I did around the rocky coast in Rhode Island. I painted for several days in a row there, to capture the surf and rocks in its various moods. Each day the ocean and rocks look different. On this day, fisherman came and set up while I was painting, which created a natural focal point.

exhibition opening

2009-02-17T11:24:00.001-08:00

Here are a couple of pictures from the opening. It was a fun gathering.

2009-02-08T07:13:00.000-08:00

The opening of my solo exhibition, "Icescapes" at the Newport Art Museum was great fun and it was a joy to see so many old friends and acquaintances. Yesterday I gave a talk on my painting and experiences in the polar regions as part of the Museum's lecture series.

I'll be giving a talk again the evening of March 6 at Peabody Essex Museum in Salem Massachusetts, where there are two exhibitions of polar paintings, one of contemporary artists, designed for all ages, and one historical. I have a few journals and two paintings in the contemporary exhibition, "Polar Attractions." This group exhibition is well designed and contains an interesting and varied mix of contemporary polar art.

As for the Newport Art Museum exhibition, museum curator, Nancy Grinnel, did a beautiful job of hanging the Wright Gallery of the Museum, creating a show that fit with the architecture of the room. Here are a few more photos from that current exhibition:

Two more photos show parts of the three display cases that house some field sketches, watercolors and notes:

2009-02-05T18:50:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of photos of my exhibition, "Icescapes" at the Newport Art Museum in Newport, RI. One photo shows one corner of the Wright gallery, in which the original paintings are hung. The other photo shows one of three display cases, which hold journals, field sketches and notes. This display case features my trips to the North Pole.

Walrus

2008-08-22T12:54:00.001-07:00

Still in Franz Josef Land, we were lucky to come upon a group of walrus on an ice floe. The zodiacs went out, and slowly approached with the engines off and the paddles out, approaching as a silent group, and stopping at a distance, where they drifted for an hour or so. Unlike in the Antarctic, where the animals are not timid, here they have a long history of being hunted, both by people and occasionally bears. So often seals and walrus will plunge into the water before you can get close enough to really see them. This group of walrus stayed out on the ice, providing a great view of them all afternoon.

Among the pinnipeds (group including the various seals and walrus), they are second largest, second only to the elephant seals. Males in this part of the arctic reach 2200 pounds or 1000 kg, and females only 1322 pounds or 600 kg.

Franz Josef Land

2008-08-21T11:22:00.001-07:00

Here are a few more pictures from Franz Josef Land, taken from the helicopter as it flew over Nightingale Sound, in the southwest portion. The ship is plowing through very light first year ice.

There was an open bridge, which allowed anyone on the ship to get the best view from the top deck. Above it was the "flying bridge" which was the open deck from which one could see in all directions. The "Kapitan Khlebnikov," is a Russian conventional icebreaker, which has six engines and can run at 25,000 horsepower when in thicker ice.

Polar bear

2008-08-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

A mother and cub were sighted off the port side of the ship and as we watched, they wandered in on the sea ice to check out the ship. They seemed quite curious, particularly the very young cub. It was a small first year cub, so it was probably the first time it had ever seen a ship. Few ships go to the Russian islands of Franz Josef Land, in contrast to Svalbard or Greenland, as it is quite far north, and there is quite a bit of Russian red tape to deal with to get there. Our ship was delayed a whole day in Murmansk because of it, even though arrangements and permissions had been arranged 5 months in advance. The person who had given permission for the ship to leave the dock, had since left the office. We were lucky to have the chance to visit this archipelago. But bears there are not too used to seeing people or ships.

The bear cub spent some time looking at the ship, even after the mother had decided there was nothing too interesting or tasty there, and had headed off, turning occasionally to see if her cub was following. The cub stayed at the ice edge for a while, regularly mewling (a cry almost like that of a cow, but much higher in pitch.) It finally turned and followed it's mom, and they wandered off into the distance, probably to resume their hunt for seals.

Murmansk to Berents Sea

2008-08-18T14:22:00.000-07:00

We boarded the ship at Murmansk, the Russian port in the northwest part of Russia, close to Finland, after a flight of an hour and a half. It is an important port for fishing and shipping, and is also where the Atomflot is located, a high security area where they keep their several nuclear powered icebreakers.

Passing through the town, we stopped at the impressive statue, Alyosha, built in 1974 of a Russian soldier of World War II, which overlooks the whole port city of Murmansk. Those are people in the lower right... yes, it's about 42 meters high.

Soon we were headed into the Berents Sea straight into a storm, spending a day in a rolling sea, heading north.

Finally, we were plowing through some first year sea ice and came upon the sight of Franz Josef Land, a group of Russian Islands half way between Murmansk and the North Pole.

Heading for the Arctic

2008-08-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

I'm back home again now, but I hardly know where to start as so much happened in the past three weeks. I traveled with Quark Expeditions from Murmansk to Franz Josef Land, to Svalbard, to Greenland, then to Iceland, where I caught a flight home. I was going to fill the official role of "artist-in-residence," as it is called on this cruise into the Arctic. It was an interesting trip full of wildlife sightings and scenery, but I will get to that in time. For now, I'll start at the beginning...

A few days early, I flew to Helsinki, Finland, the jumping off point for this trip, to have a chance to see the city and paint a bit, test out my new plein air set up, and get my arctic supplies in order. A favorite spot of mine, which I remembered from a similar trip two years ago, was the old harbor on the eastern side of town where all the wooden boats are. It was pleasant to sit there with people quietly strolling past. Everything was the same. Even the same boats were docked in the same spots as two years before. I couldn't tell at first but once I started painting, I recognized everything about them... the shape of the stern, the painted lines, the rigging... my hand remembered better than I did- it was striking. Somehow I "see " more when I'm painting.

Then came July 22 when I walked up to the Radisson Hotel, to meet met with the 93 passengers. We boarded the charter bus to the airport for the flight to Murmansk, Russia. In Murmansk we would board the conventional Russian icebreaker, "Kapitan Khlebnikov". There was that buzz of excitement in the hotel lobby, always in group just before the first day of a cruise.

Arctic trip

2008-07-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

Today I'm flying off to join a Quark cruise from Murmansk to Franz Josef Land, Svalbard, and N.E. Greenland. I won't have internet connection, but will be back in August when I can post a few pictures of the trip here. Have a good summer.

Arctic skuas

2008-07-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

I am now making preparations to go on an Arctic cruise as "artist in residence" with Quark Expeditions. As my departure is just a week away, I am thinking more about the arctic wildlife we might see. I remember seeing a pair of "arctic skuas" also called "parasitic jaegers" on the tundra in Franz Josef Land two years ago. We were on the nuclear powered icebreaker, "Yamal," stopping at Franz Josef Land, a Russian archipelago, on the way south from the geographic North Pole. I sketched the birds through binoculars, and later used that pencil sketch to compose a painting of the nesting pair. Today, walking on a beach in Rhode Island I thought of them as I watched one hungry tern zipping through the air after another, who had a small fish in its beak. The arctic skua takes that one step further, by chasing gulls and terns in the air, forcing them to disgorge their last meal, so they can steal it. These are true aerial pirates! Maybe we will see that in action on the upcoming trip.

"Polar Attractions Exhibition"

2008-06-27T07:10:00.000-07:00

If you are anywhere near Salem Massachusetts, come see a polar exhibition which opens Saturday, June 28 at the Peabody Essex Museum. It showcases 30 contemporary artists who work with polar subjects. There will be some of my own work there, including one watercolor, and an original painting which was done for the book, "The Island that Moved". It is a family oriented "interactive" exhibition. For more information on the exhibition, visit the Peabody Essex exhibition, "Polar Attractions." (See blog entry below for more details.)

Polar exhibition

2008-06-26T17:53:00.000-07:00

On exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum is an original oil painting done for the book, "The Island that Moved."
"The Island that Moved" is one of several books I have illustrated about Antarctica. This one shows the different climates and various states the continent went through during the last 200 million years. It teaches plate tectonics to young people, and taught me a great deal in the process of researching the pictures. I had to find out what plants, animals, and conditions existed there at various times of prehistory, and what Antarctica must have looked like. What an extensive project that was! I consulted science journals and several Antarctic paleontologists who were all so forthcoming. I visited Dr. Bill Hammer, in Illinois, who had discovered, in the Transantarctic Mountains, the only known specimen of "Cryolophosaurus," a giant predator related to T-rex. Its name means "Frozen crested lizard." Dr. Hammer had the skeleton there I could sketch for reference. It is always a joy to work with scientists so passionate about their subjects. I find that science and art are similar in that they both require thought and interpretation in their inquiries into our complex world. Perceptions vary, and neither the artist nor the scientist lives in an absolute world.

McMurdo Station

2008-05-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

This week I had the opportunity to see Herzog's new film, "Encounters at the End of the World" at a local film festival. To film this, Herzog went to McMurdo Station, the largest station in Antarctica, under the auspices of the National Science Foundation's Artist and Writer's Program. I was there under that same program, and boy, how it brought back memories! I knew several of the scientists that were in the movie, and recognized places, including the inside of one of our Wooville Camp huts, where Herzog interviewed a seal scientist describing the milk of a Weddell Seal. I would recommend this movie, as it is an interesting commentary on the station culture. Herzog warned NSF before they sent him that he wasn't going to be making another fluffy penguin movie, and he sure didn't! But it does make me nostalgic for the experience of working at the stations. Though I haven't been to McMurdo in ten years, it looms large in my memory. My recent six seasons on the peninsula side of Antarctica were spent aboard the Marco Polo cruise ship and although I thoroughly enjoyed that experience, it couldn't be more different from being based at a science station. In addition to the eccentric personalities Herzog brings forth, is some fantastic underwater footage from the underneath the sea ice.

Ice Camp

2008-04-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

This was a view our ice camp from the helicopter. You can see Mount Erebus in the background, and it was steaming away, as it is still an active volcano. We were really away from everything except nature, and could hear the silence of the night, broken by the pinging of the ice on occasion when new cracks formed. I always wondered what happens to the tide when the ocean is frozen over. We certainly were not going up and down with the tide, though, because off to the right was land, to which this "fast ice" was attached. It did move though, we could tell, as cracks would form. Sometimes "pressure ridges" would form where ice broke and the two sides pushed together, raising up a whole line of broken ice, sometimes several feet high. For the most part it was flat. There is something wonderful about having such an expansive view of the landscape. What a sense of space out there!

White-out

2008-04-15T19:06:00.000-07:00

It was during a white-out storm that I did these sketches of Sara Wheeler writing her book, "Terra Incognita" inside our ice camp hut. (You can see the white through the windows). She wrote about our experiences at Wooville, and as I reread them now, I relive the experience again. However, as "creative" non-fiction, it has its embellishments, but it does give an amusing, and well written picture. We were lucky that our project dates overlapped at McMurdo, as it takes a minimum of two people to set up a field camp. We got along very well, working all day, exploring out on the ice during good weather days. After work, we made a big deal of dinner, cooking up something from the mostly freeze dried supplies, a few fresh things that keep well, like garlic and onions. We collected ice to melt for water. It was a simple life, writing, painting, and living out in the wilderness, and brings back fond memories.

Big Razorback Island

2008-04-08T06:19:00.001-07:00

From our camp I used to take the "Woomobile" out over the ice to do watercolors from the "heated cabin". That meant that the temperature was up from in the minus forties Fareinheit almost to the freezing point. Still, I managed with a thermos of boiling water to thaw the brushes. This was a watercolor I did on one such day, of "Big Razorback" Island, one of four islands poking out of the sea ice. Together, these "Delbridge Islands" form the rim of an ancient volcanic crater, mostly submerged. I could see the four islands were in a circle, somewhat like Deception Island on the Peninsula, but here one could drive into the middle of the crater, whereas at Deception, one could sail in. Unlike Deception, this crater was inactive, so no hot springs warmed this frigid landscape.

Wooville

2008-04-04T15:07:00.003-07:00

I came across this watercolor that I did of our field camp on the frozen Ross Sea. This is the camp where a British writer and I were staying when the group of Emperor penguins came in for a visit one night. It consisted of two wooden huts on 6 feet of frozen sea. What an amazing experience that was! I was part of the National Science Foundation Artist and Writer's program doing paintings and drawings during the beautiful Antarctic spring season. Then, the 24 hour sunlight of summer had not yet started, and we had many hours of long twilight. The red vehicle on the left was our "Spryte" which is like a small bulldozer with tracks for going over the hummocky ice. It would crawl along at 10 mph and could get us to McMurdo Station in two hours if the weather was good. The middle hut we used for cooking on our Coleman stove, and the hut on the right we used for living and working, as it had two wooden bunks and two tables. Both were heated with an oil drip stove, so we were quite toasty, even when outside temperatures hovered around minus 50 degrees Farenheit (-45 C). The line of green flags marked the bamboo sticks that held up our radio antenna. Each morning at 9 AM we would call in to McMurdo Station to say that all was well at our field camp. All field camps had a specific call-in time, which was just a safety check. We could then turn off the radio and experience peace of the Antarctic wilderness. On a day like this one, we could bundle up and go out for a walk (with icepicks to check the sea ice), or go for a ride in the Spryte. On stormy days, we worked inside, as whiteout conditions would reduce visibility to zero. In some cases you could hardly see your boots through the blowing snow, and had to stand at a 45 angle to the wind just to stand up! There was no wandering on those days. We could just get to the other hut by following a 20 foot rope, so as not to get lost on the way over!

Ushuaia

2008-04-02T17:13:00.000-07:00

Looking through all the watercolors I've done over the years, I sometimes come across ones that bring me back to the moment I did them.

One small one in particular caught my attention. I did it on one of those many days when the Marco Polo was docked in Ushuaia for a day and a half between Antarctic cruises. I was inspired by not the main part of town, but the outskirts, as seen from the dock, with its mountainous backdrop. I spent so many days there over the years, going for walks, enjoying the sight of green things ... trees and grass, and colorful lupine and poppies in gardens. As much as I love Antarctica, after immersion in that icy landscape, I appreciate all the more the lush green luxury of warmer climes.

Emperor pastel

2008-03-15T08:05:00.001-07:00

This is one of six paintings I recently added to my website. These three penguins are parading toward the field camp on the frozen Ross Sea, where I once lived for 2 1/2 months, painting the landscape. Twenty-four Emperors ambled in from the edge of the sea ice straight toward our two wooden huts. The Antarctic springtime brought soft colors in this magical place where the sun never set. The sun just dipped toward the horizon, casting golden rays among the long shadows.

See more on www.luciadeleiris.com (Antarctic page)

new paintings

2008-03-10T18:26:00.000-07:00

It was a good season traveling to the Antarctic Peninsula aboard the Marco Polo ship... my 6th year on board as lecturer and official artist in residence. Now that the ship has been sold, this will have been the last season. I enjoyed working with a wonderful expedition team for my six seasons on that ship. But I will be doing other trips to many interesting places, and will keep you posted.

In the meantime, there are several new Antarctic paintings on the the Antarctic page of my website. Included are some of Emperor penguins. I had spent time with many of these huge penguins during my previous stay on the Ross Sea side of Antarctica. This year we were surprised by one Emperor as they are rarely seen on that part of the Peninsula. It was mid January when it jumped out of the surf onto the rocks and wandered among the Gentoo Penguins at Port Lockroy. It was the fattest, plumpest Emperor I had ever seen! Apparently it had put on a nice layer of blubber to get ready for molting, when it would go a long time without eating. Seeing it was a real treat, and a great send off for our last season aboard the Marco Polo!