Svalbard Sketches - 2010

Svalbard
Sketches from my my expedition to the high arctic with Cape Farewell (2010)

In summer 2010 I was invited to participate in Cape Farewell's 9th Art & Science expedition to the High Arctic. We–a group of marine scientists, writers, musicians, visual artists, directors and architects from around the world–spent three weeks sailing the waters of the high Norwegian arctic around Svalbard on the 100 year old tall ship Noorderlicht.

The arctic is particularly sensitive to global warming. We encountered the magnificence of this extreme environment, but also evidence of threat to the wildlife and flora and most conspicuously the melting glaciers. I have stood where glaciers had flowed for over ten thousand years, and today their towering bulk is reduced to a thin sheet of ice in a muddy track of rubble, to vanish completely the next summer. My perspective changed through the tangible experience. Climate change on a planetary scale truly is The Global Challenge of future human existence. I sense that my fictitious characters will respond ...

The sketches are excerpts from 3 sketchbooks I filled with observations, drawings and notes during the voyage. The washes over the ink-drawings were done with the melting glacier-water I collected on site.