Holding Breath

 

2017-ongoing

 

Watercolour painting/prints made in sub-zero temperatures.

 

This ongoing project began in Greenland and continued in Svalbard (high arctic) during the winter seasons. The temperature freezes the watercolour as it is applied and creates crystalline patterns by chance.

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In 2018 this process informed a continuous meditation on the returning of the light after polar night in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. This town is situated in a glacial valley at 78º North, the northernmost permanently settled place on earth.

 

The pigment was applied to the paper outside in sub-zero temperatures, the freezing process and falling of snow creating unique crystalline prints. The prints remained outside until

they dried so to permanently capture these frozen patterns (strong weather sometimes damaging or destroying the print). Varying temperatures, humidity, pigment type, wind,

and my own physical response to the cold created wildly different effects. This was carried out during the wait between the first sun rise above the horizon, to the day the sun actually touched the valley town.

 

A held breath between night and day.