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:

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

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.

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.