“High Latitudes” – Painting the Arctic

I’ve previously written about traveling in Svalbard in the High Arctic – an archipelago about halfway between the Northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. You can read about my trip here https://juliewilsonart.com/blog/ at “Arctic Dreaming”.

I had wanted to visit the Arctic for a long time drawn by childhood adventure books and tales of derring-do, fascinated by its extremity, its isolation, its utter beauty and (if I’m honest) by this BBC wildlife footage by Gordon Buchanan which has to be the most riveting 5 minutes of television I’ve ever seen https://youtu.be/9G1aHkLHQ2I?si=9v5n-f-eyJB4QHst.

But I also travelled with purpose:

I wanted to see; I wanted to learn; I wanted to be amazed; I wanted to be inspired; and I wanted to paint. Svalbard did not disappoint.

Since I returned I’ve not yet had a chance to fully focus on painting the Arctic. There have been other commitments and commissions as well as other distractions that have kept me away from getting stuck in - sometimes life just happens and painting has to take a back seat.

But the memory of the epic Arctic landscapes is imprinted on the inside of my eyelids and I’ve been obsessing over the images and photographs that I took there.

Slowly I’ve started to build my collection of paintings.

It started with an experiment in a more abstracted approach to painting. Using one of my Arctic reference photos I took part in a workshop which helped me to lose detail and produce a looser painting. The finished painting “High Arctic” is below, but you can read about that process in my blog post “Relearning How to Paint: High Arctic”.

I love the finished piece which is loose and evocative. 

But I wanted to try to evoke how I felt standing on the deck of my expedition ship staring at the haunting coastline as it slowly materialised through fog and rain and snow fronts. I spent one weekend this summer working on this pair of paintings:

All three paintings featured in a small works exhibition at North Down Museum in Bangor, Northern Ireland earlier this year.

I love these little paintings. For me they capture a mood and atmosphere as well as recreating the physical chill.

But what I loved most about the Arctic was its scale – this is beauty – cold, harsh, ethereal beauty, but on a truly epic scale. And when I dreamt of painting the Arctic it was always on a grand scale. So in the autumn I finally started to paint the paintings I’ve been dreaming about with this large painting of the Lilliehöökbreen glacier.

This painting was the most exciting and challenging painting I’ve ever done. Not going to lie, I’m a little bit in love with it. But there were moments when i was lost in the fissures of the glacier and wondered if I’d ever find my way through. You can watch some hyperlapse of my process here:

It IS my all time favourite painting – I hope you enjoy it.

I experienced Svalbard at the height of the polar day, so the sun never set on my Arctic experience. I spent a much time as possible huddled up, standing on the deck of the ship, just looking.

But occasionally I did retire to what was the smallest cabin in the world. I have very fond memories of that cabin – every movement choreographed to get around it, and the best view in the world just on the other side of the porthole.

Sea travel is really the only way to access the far North of Svalbard and I wanted to pay tribute to the expedition ship that opened up new worlds for me, and to our room-with-a-view-teeny-tiny-no-frills cabin in my painting “Nordstjernen”.

There’s so much more to tell and so much more to paint and I fully intend both to tell it and to paint it. I’m hoping to really focus on developing this collection of Arctic paintings during 2024.

I hope you’ll continue to join me as I do so.