Jul 15, 2011
You can see me, along with other artists such as Alyssa Monks, Maya Brodsky, Peter Drake and Will Cotton discuss the uniqueness of the New York Academy of Art at this link: http://www.nyaa.edu/nyaa/home.html.
Jun 15, 2011
A painting of mine will be on display at the 5th Annual NYAA Summer Exhibition, showing at the Flowers Gallery in Chelsea, NY
Opening: Thursday June 23rd, 6-8pm
(Show will be up from June 23rd through August 6, 2011. Tues-Sat 10-6pm)
Where: Flowers Gallery, 529 West 20th St, 3rd Fl, NY, NY.
The June issue of Australia’s Art Monthly contains an article “4000-year-old bubbles popping: Postcards from The Arctic Circle artist residency.” Written by Ursula Dawkins, it gives a great description of what it was like for us to create our artwork in the frozen north.
An excerpt from Dawkins’ article: “Meanwhile, two photographers (Christina Seely and Regina Kokoszka) work quietly and surely in medium and large format (Seely is known for her series Lux, documenting the artificial glow of major world cities); while painters Saul Becker (USA) and Carrie-Ann Bracco (USA) interrogate and extend the landscape painting tradition. While Becker sticks to photo-documentation for later studio work, Bracco subjects herself to lengthy plein air sessions, wrestling with snow-blasted oil paints and frozen fingers as an exercise in immediacy and endurance. Hers seems a particularly crazy pursuit but is one which perhaps achieves the most in direct terms (‘ten productive two-hour sessions’, she says), while also achieving more ‘stillness’ than most of us put together.”
I’m pleased to share that I was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant for 2011. The grant will allow me to continue my Arctic studio paintings inspired by my trip to Svalbard last year. More information about the Pollock-Krasner Foundation can be found at www.pkf.org.
Oct 30, 2010
10/6
Greetings from the Arctic! I am currently in Longyearbyen, Svalbard which is north or Norway. Its an old mining town, and the weather is grey and rainy. I am staying a lodge for the next couple of days while getting over jet lag and adjusting to the cold weather. In a few days, I will be boarding the boat and the true expedition and real work will begin. I’m looking forward to sharing photos and artwork with you when I return! :-)
10/9
We spent the first couple of days in the Arctic at the lodge meeting each other, getting last minute supplies rand touring the town. Longyearbyen is a Norwegian mining town and is the northernmost town with more than 1000 people. There are surrounding towns but they mostly cannot be accessed by road and getting there requires snowmobiles, dogsleds or boats. Even walking a few minutes outside of town is not recommended due to potential encounters with polar bears.
So far the weather has been grey and drizzly so it there haven’t been good opportunities to paint yet. But there have been good opportunities to test out my cold weather gear on hikes around town. My boots are super warm and comfortable.
There are about 20 artists on the expedition, many photographers, video artists or conceptual artists. There are also a couple of other painters. Tomorrow we will be boarding the boat and adjusting to our new home, then by the next day, we can begin our projects! I’ll be sending another update in a couple of weeks when we return to Longyearbyen…
10/11
We have been on the boat for two days and already we have seen the Northern Lights and shooting stars. The boat is a 120 ft schooner which is surprisingly roomy for twenty artists and crew. Our cabins are probably about 100 square feet shared by two people. For common areas, we have two salons big enough for two tables each. We use Zodiacs (inflatable motorized boats) to get onto shore during the day and spend afternoons and some evenings sailing and motoring to our next location. We are at 78 degrees latitude and are headed up the coast of Svalbard (also known as Spitsbergen) to Moffen Island at 80 degrees before heading back.
When we go on shore, we either take hikes for landscape photography or stay in one place to work on our projects. At all times, we are accompanied by an armed guard in case we come across hungry polar bears. So far we have only seen reindeer, birds and arctic fox. The landscape is mostly barren rock and snow. The sea seems to stretch on endlessly and there are no other boats on the water. Today, in the distance we could see the last one or two settlements as we passed them before being completely alone in the North.
(Interesting trivia about our location: The Northern Lights do not occur directly over the poles but 20 or so degrees south. We are so far north that we need to look SOUTH to see the Northern Lights! Also, today, someone told me that we are 800 miles north of the highest point of Siberia. The reason its possible to travel here at all and the sea is not covered in pack ice is because the sea currents carry warm water up the Atlantic. )
10/17
We are at the halfway mark of our trip. The weather has been remarkably cooperative so far and I have my fingers crossed that it stays that way. Aside from some high swells on some nights while sailing, the water has been calm especially where we drop anchor, so seasickness has been minimal. As for the weather, its cold but the layers and layers of wool and wind-proof, water-proof clothing keeps me warm for the first couple of hours out of doors. We usually only spend two to three hours on land at a time so by the time I start getting cold, it is time to start heading back to the ship.
Our typical schedule is that we rise at 8 for breakfast, eat and scramble to get all of our gear together. We go onshore for the morning, return to the ship for lunch and then back onto land for the afternoon. I’ve been able to make several sketches on site so far, using the onsite sketches to make color notes and taking photo references the rest of the time. The colors are amazing. Each day, the day gets shorter while dawn and dusk last longer. Most of the day the skies glow with soft lemon and pink hues. The water is the deepest, clearest turquoise I’ve ever seen. The only times I was absolutely miserable trying to paint was while it snowed. The snow would stick to the oil paint and turn it into a gummy consistency that was nearly impossible to work with and wouldn’t stick to the panel.
A couple of days ago, we arrived at Moffen Island. We crossed the 80 degree line at night and the second mate rang the emergency bell to mark the occasion. Unfortunately, I was down in the salon with a couple of others when the bell rang and nearly had a heart attack. We started diving for our life jackets when someone said “No life jackets, just meet on deck”. On deck, the crew passed out mulled wine and shot flares into the night sky. We toasted and watched the northern lights on the horizon. It felt like a New Year’s celebration with the added relief of not being shipwrecked in the Arctic. A couple of hours later, we reached Moffen Island.
On Moffen Island, it snowed most of the time we were there. Unlike Spitsbergen with its jagged mountain peaks, Moffen was flat and seemed endless. It was a resting place for walrus and they were everywhere. We could walk up quite close to them. They lay in heaps resting on the beach and we worked near them without disturbing them. When it was time to leave, we couldn’t find a place for the Zodiac to come ashore without passing the walruses. They are curious and like to poke at rubber boats with their tusks so it was a bit nerve wracking getting into the boat and motoring within ten feet of them on the way to the ship.
10/22
It was a good thing that the weather was nice for the first half of the trip because by the second week the weather had turned for the worse. It was hard to make landings due to the rough water, so we had some days just on board the ship and I didn’t get much more work done. We spent a couple of days visiting Ny-Alesun and Barentsburg. Ny Alesun is a scientific research station that looks like a quaint little town. Its so isolated that scientists can use the atmospheric readings as controls for what the atmosphere “should” be without all the human pollution. Barentsburg is a Russian settlement, primarly a mining community, but its real purpose is to keep a strategic outpost in the North. The townspeople are essentially trapped in the small snowy village for two years while they work out their contracts-there are no roads to other towns, they don’t have boats or snowmobiles and they cant hike out and camp because they don’t have rifles to protect themselves from the bears.
Since I couldn’t really work, I had fun acting small parts in another artist’s film, helped raised the sails on deck and generally rested. During the worst days of sailing, the boat would tilt at a 45 degree angle and it was exhausting just trying to stand up straight. The angle combined with the swell meant that most people stayed on deck trying not to fall overboard or retreated to their rooms to sleep until it was all over. Sleeping meant laying just as much on the wall next to the bed as on the actual bed itself, until the wind changed direction of course and you have to hold on to keep from being thrown out of the bunk.
On the last day of the trip, the cook and crew prepared a five course candlelight dinner for us. The food was very good throughout the trip, but this was truly incredible, especially given the small galley that the cook had to work in. It was probably the nicest meal I have ever had. I was very lucky and grateful that the cook made accommodations for my diet (gluten-free) throughout the trip and I didn’t have to eat peanut butter for two weeks.
Now we are back in Longyearbyen and I will have 30 hours of airports and flights before I will be home. In all, I was able to do about 10 small oil sketches on site and I have hundreds of photographs – more than enough material for the continued work in the studio. Photos of the artwork coming soon…