"Going up north" has taken on new meaning since I’ve returned from a month long expedition to the North Pole and Franz Josef Land. There were times while painting on the trembling bow of a northbound atomic icebreaker, The Yamal,  that I was the farthest north a human being can be on the planet! Truly on top of the world!

The quality of seeing is often more important than the object; however, the power of a place can awaken the senses and erase preconceptions. The Arctic, this formidable yet fragile wilderness of endless ice and great white bears, was so inspirational that I knew then that I would have to go back. I painted the following paintings after setting up my easel on the drifting ice within the vicinity of the North Pole or on deck while moving through pack ice.

 
Painting melt water pools  at the North Pole, 2007 (Photo by Emily Schindler)

Easel set up at the North Pole

The North Pole #1 (watercolor, 7x22) by David McEown

Toward the North Pole #2 (watercolor, 10x13) by David McEown

Painting at the North Pole with profile of the nuclear icebreaker, The Yamal
(photo by Sue Flood)

Flying the Canadaian Society of Painters in Watercolour flag at the North Pole
July 15th 2007 (photo by Marketa Jirouskova)

More information:
"The North Pole" conjures the image of Santa Claus and elves, but it's an actual designation, the northernmost point on Earth; The Geographic or Terrestrial North Pole, defines latitude 90 degrees North, the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth’s axis of rotation meets the Earth’s surface. In contrast to the South Pole, located on land, the North Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean; it is covered with sea ice  that continually shifts; hence, it has been impossible to build a research station there.

Franz Joseph Land  is an archipelago of 91 ice-covered islands in the far north of Russia. The islands are composed of basalt from the Tertiary and Jurassic periods; the northeastern part of the archipelago is locked in pack ice, which retreats around the southern islands in summer.
 
American engineer Robert Edwin Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole on April 6, 1909. Aboard the airship Norge, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen sighted the North Pole on May 12, 1926. (Two years later a search-and-rescue plane Amundsen was aboard crashed; he and the crew disappeared without a trace.)

Indeed, the history of Arctic exploration is cloaked in mystery and intrigue. The first men to set foot on the North Pole may have been a party from the Soviet Union, who landed a plane there on April 23, 1948. Ten years later a Navy submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN-571) crossed the North Pole on August 3, 1958; on March 17, 1959, another Navy submarine, USS Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the  Pole. The first men to reach the North Pole on foot, with dog teams, were part of a 1968 British expedition led by Sir Wally Herbert whose team traveled for sixteen months along the Arctic Ocean’s longest axis, Barrow, from Alaska to Svalbard. (Herbert died just a few months ago at the age of 72; to read his obituary, go to www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1927969.ece

Like David McEown, Sir Wally Herbert was a painter as well as a writer. Herbert's first  book, The Noose of Laurels, is a biography of fellow explorer Robert Edwin Peary.

A Soviet nuclear powered icebreaker Arkitka completed a surface journey to the North Pole on August 17, 1977. Given the rigors of Arctic and Antarctic travel, nuclear power is ideal for icebreakers, since the ships can be out at sea, far from fueling stations, for years. David McEown's trip to the Arctic in July was aboard a nuclear powered icebreaker, The Yamal. To read more about nuclear powered icebreakers, go to http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/franzjo/fjlhome.html.

For the current, September trip, David McEown is on board Kapitan Khelbnikov, a diesel-powered an icebreaker in the Quark Expeditions fleet.

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Click here to read David’s blog entries written during his trip to Antarctica in 2006.

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