Art in the Atrium, Franklin Crossing is featuring abstract oil paintings by noted Bend artist, Sandy Brooke, associate professor OSU-Cascades, retired.
Brooke notes, What’s Left of the Arctic is a series of abstract oil paintings documenting the current demise of Arctic Sea Ice in the Arctic Polar Region which includes the Arctic Ocean and adjacent parts of Alaska, Canada, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. Ice Fields have become giant drifting fragments with ice drifting southward where it is disintegrating and melting. Ice becomes water integrated into the air and the wind.
Nature’s balance between beauty and chaos is reflected in the paintings through abstraction, brushwork, calligraphic and graphic marks, layers of transparent oil paint and fields of paint.
“Atmospheric scientists believe this is a ‘human influenced geological epoch’ where glaciers in Greenland are becoming waterfalls and ice is speeding its flow into the ocean. According to the Norwegian Polar Institute, as of January 18 we had the lowest amount of ice in the Arctic ever. Warming temperatures have stopped ice from regrowing.”
“We know everything is impermanent, environmental change, a battle between nature and culture, control and futility, beauty and decay inevitable, but the current disruption in the Arctic, ‘North America’s Crown Jewel,’ is shocking!”
“We are seeing that Global Warming is real, and Greenhouse Gas effects on the earth are causing sea levels to rise, extreme heat, unprecedented rainfalls and wildfires.”
Confirming Brooke’s alarm, NASA reported in November 2017, “that two to four times as many coastal glaciers around Greenland are at risk of accelerated melting than previously thought. Greenland is losing an average of 260 billion tons of ice each year. In mid-September, a surge of warm air caused a spike in surface melting in southern Greenland—one of the largest spikes to occur in September since 1978.”
Billye Turner, art consultant, organizes art events for Franklin Crossing with info at 503-780-2828 and billyeturner@bendnet.com.