On Thin Ice
Elliot Adams
Acrylic on canvas, 9in × 12in
This painting concerns the melting cryosphere and the subsequent rising sea levels. As someone who lives in England, a country that is low lying and surrounded by the sea, I find rising water levels very unnerving. I felt that it was appropriate to use acrylics and coarse brushes to create gestural brush strokes in this piece. The marks I have made show movement which is indicative of the changes that are occurring in the Arctic and Antarctic as a result of global warming.
Zaria Forman’s beautiful drawings of icescapes inspired me to capture the splendour of the Earth’s ice. Conversely, Camille Seaman’s haunting photographs in “The Last Iceberg” influenced me to use dark tones to create a sense of foreboding, relative to the issues I have chosen to explore. I wanted my piece to look majestic and to also be ominous in an understated way.