The painting above is one in a continuing series of large paintings influenced by changes to our environment caused by climate change . Included in the series are images suggestive of receding ice caps and what is revealed as the layers peel back. In some ways the idea relates also to work in progress about the past as discovered in archaeological digs and tidal scouring where the action of increasingly high seas and tides expose the remains of ships for example that surround the UK coastline.

This large painting had been on the easel in my studio for just over one year . I had read the book about Ernest Shackleton’s doomed Antarctic voyage where his ship was lost below the ice but where he and his entire crew after many months and several adventures were all saved through Shackleton’s amazing leadership and that of his navigator.

I then read the book about the fairly recent attempts to locate the ship beneath the sea ice and the success against the odds in finding it in 36 feet of water when the ice pack diminished and allowed this remarkable find to happen.

The painting was made initially around the time that I was enthralled by the stories and is a very loose and imaginative attempt to suggest those temperature changes and the break up of the ice packs to reveal things long lost.

The work is titled Weddell Sea and it underwent many changes and iterations before I was happy with the composition, structure colour and surface.