Murmansk to Berents Sea

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

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

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

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"

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

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.

Ice Camp

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!