Polar Self Portraits

Adrift

The brief for this international Creatives Without Borders project was to create a self portait as part of the polar landscape, in the context of climate change. The maximum dimension being A3 size.

I think one of the most evocative images of the repercussions of climate change for me has been photographs of the lone polar bear marooned on an iceberg, caught out by the warming sea temperatures and therefore cut adrift in the middle of the ocean on an ever diminishing iceberg. As such my intention, with this work was to convey that I would, if I could, afford them sanctuary. But the other component of the challenge was a self portrait, and I didn’t realise until I had completed the work, that this piece is also about the bereavement I have experienced this year, the sense of loss, aloneness and being emotionally frozen that has occurred as a result. So unexpectedly and unbidden it is almost as if the bear is concerned for my well being in the resulting image.