Arctic Artifacts: Land & Sea and Eocene Ellesmere

Land & Sea: 12 x 36 inches , oil on canvas

Eocene Ellesmere: 18 x 36 inches , oil on canvas

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My Arctic Artifacts paintings are based upon discoveries made when I worked at a 1991 research camp on Ellesmere Island. Land & Sea illustrates an aging muskox vertebra which lay near a fossilized coral ‘stone’. Thus, evidence of an ancient sea is preserved in today’s polar desert where muskoxen still roam. Adolphus Greely (1880’s) and Mary Dawson (1975) discovered “fossil forests” on High Arctic Islands. Eocene Ellesmere portrays a charcoal-like portion of an ancient tree. It’s a mummified artifact of the Eocene Epoch (40 million years ago).

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