It should have been water. It was ice.
We should have been just entering. We struggled our way in.
Floes put on our track as a way to slow down. Everybody onboard slowed down.
Away the excitement of the ever more, bigger, closer.
You’re just caught by the landscape.
And as you navigate the sea ice, you navigate your thoughts.
The progressive perfect stillness bumps into rough edged pieces of ice or the distraction of a penguin call.
Even when a whale gently breaks the surface, the light as a way of tempering down the excitement.
Not as a buzz killer, more as a quiet grounding.
What is it in a landscape, in the light, that suddenly grounds someone ?

The tiredness of the evening. How could one go to bed ? Mind settles, stops thinking and watches.
No more pictures. No more talks.
The crowd went silence and dispersed itself.
The solitudes and the looks give away how the landscapes question oneself.
A friend told me
“Antarctica has a way of stripping things back to what matters”.

The sun in its never ending descent.
Almost midnight. Last beam.
Away with the bright warm colours.
It should have been the end but it is the start of another show.
The real one.
The show of subtleties and nuances.
Pastel colours and soft contrasts. Imperceptibly darkening.
I could start another painting. I won’t.
Hands in my pockets, I match the stillness of the water, of my thoughts.

One more floe. One more penguin. One more whale.
It should have been water and gratefully, it was ice. “

Field watercolor, 19 x 28 cm.