Day Two:
I look forward to posting daily updates to this Web page that will be inspired during a semi-circumnavigation expedition to Antarctica’s spectacular and remote places that are only accessible by a polar-class icebreaker, the Kapitan Klebnikov (Quark Expeditions).
As artist in residence, along with an expert team of biologists, geologists, a historian and 100 international passengers, I will be conducting several drawing and painting workshops for the many curious and inspired passengers. Through the creative act of seeing and painting, we hope to enhance our experience of and find some way to express reverence for this incredibly beautiful place.
I look forward, too, to creating a body of work and keeping a journal that will record the challenges of painting in watercolor while experiencing the sometimes-freezing temperatures of Antarctica. Also I will share the challenges of painting on the high seas and on the infamous Drake Passage.
Today seas are calm as we return across the Drake Passage to Ushuaia, Argentina to pick up a new group of passengers for the Epic Antarctica 28-day voyage board aboard Kapitan Klebnikov.
-- David
The icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov
More information:
The seas are rarely calm in the Drake Passage! To read more about the Drake Passage in the Southern Ocean, a body of water between Cape Horn and the Antarctic Peninsula, visit
www.soc.sotonac.uk/JRD/HYDRO/drake
Departure to the Antarctic Peninsula from the port of
Ushuaia, Argentina, on the southern tip of South America.
The South Pole is breathtaking in a different way when seen from space. To see incredible satellite images of the South Pole and the Drake Passage, visit
www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/RadarSat.htmlThe place where David McEown posted this blog, Ushuaia, is the southernmost city in the world. On the shores of The Beagle Channel, it is surrounded by the Martial Mountains. Ushuaia is home to three of the world’s largest birds: the rhea, the condor and the albatross. Other animals travelers might spot are guanacos, otters, seals and sea lions. To read about Ushuaia, the capital of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, and the Southern Atlantic Islands Province, visit
www.patagonia-argentina.com/i/tierradelfuego/ushuaia.
The voyage David McEown embarks on today brings to mind Ernest Shackleton’s heroic trial when his ship, the Endurance, broke apart in polar ice in 1914. During the perilous journey to safe harbor, Shackleton and his crew endured unspeakable deprivation in the most harrowing circumstances; miraculously, they all survived. Shackleton’s own journals (with entries from Fergus Fleming and Frank Hurley) are collected in South: The Endurance Exhibition, now in paperback from Penguin Classics. Another account, this one by Alfred Lansing, is Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, reprinted by Carroll and Graf Publishers in 1986.
To read a biography of Sir Ernest Shackleton and a capsule version of his journey, visit www.south-pole.com/p0000098.htm.
You may want to rent the 2000 movie, as well: The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition, starring Liam Neeson and Julian Ayer, directed by George Butler.
Drake Passage, Horizon Embrace (watercolor, 8.5 x14.5)
Drake Passage #1 (watercolor, 10x 14.5)
Drake Passage #2 (watercolor,10 x 14.5)