Oil on canvas, 150cm x 130cm
Less than an hour’s sailing from the British base at King Edward Point is the great Nordenskjold Glacier, which at 3.5km wide spans the head of Cumberland Bay East. While the Golden Fleece cruised up and down the front of this great wall of ice John and I were deposited on a beach to do some painting.
It was a calm day but a thin drizzle, light enough to make it worthwhile getting out the paints, was the source of some frustration. Time and again, just I was happy with the glacier and had started painting the water, my carefully painted wall of ice would dissolve and very gently run down the paper.
I loved the stillness of the scene and, despite being overcast, a soft light illuminated the ice flows, which glowed with translucent greens and blues. In the middle of painting the sketch, two king penguins swam into view, perfectly breaking the almost monochromatic palette with tiny dashes of orange-yellow.
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