Painting on location · Cape Adare, Antarctica · Ross Sea, January 2026
Antarctica Landscape Project
A Painter at the Edge of the World
In January 2026 I sailed to 77 degrees south as expedition artist aboard Heritage Expeditions’ Heritage Adventurer — four weeks through the Sub-Antarctic Islands and into the Ross Sea. I painted on deck and on land in temperatures that froze my mediums.
I came home with 30 colour studies made from direct observation, a notebook full of sketches, and more urgency than I have ever felt about a body of work. This is that body of work.
30 colour studies painted on location aboard Heritage Adventurer, Ross Sea, January–February 2026
The Project
Antarctica is the most remote landscape on Earth. Almost no one will ever see it. And almost no serious body of contemporary painting of it exists.
Over the next 18 months I am creating a major body of oil paintings — large-scale works made entirely by hand, in natural light, in the tradition of the Old Masters and the great expedition artists. The capital works will be donated as a permanent collection to a major public institution with an Antarctic collecting mandate. Selected works will be available for acquisition.
This project has been underway for six months, self-funded so far. I am now looking for patrons to see it through to completion, exhibition, and its permanent home.
Works in Progress
Four paintings, made now
These works are already under way — built on the oil studies painted on location, finished in the studio in natural light. Each is a translation of something witnessed directly.
Cape Adare Sunset · Oil on canvas · Work in progress, 2026
Scale and Purity
Cape Adare — the northernmost tip of Antarctica, first landfall of the continent — seen at the long summer dusk, icebergs small as punctuation on the horizon. The warm iron of the cliffs against the steel of the Ross Sea. This is the threshold: the moment of arrival.
The Living Continent
Snow and black rock mirrored in perfect stillness. Coulman Island rises from the Ross Sea in a silence that feels absolute. This work explores the quality of Antarctic light that painters have chased since the expedition era — grey, luminous, directionless, unlike anything in the northern hemisphere.
Path to Coulman Island · 1550 × 910mm · Charcoal and Chalk on Paper · 2026
The First Iceberg · 1250 × 750mm · Oil on canvas · Work in progress, 2026
Scale and Purity
The first iceberg sighted on the voyage — it stopped every person on deck. This painting attempts what brought me to Antarctica: the translation of scale and silence into something a viewer standing in a gallery can feel in their body. The blue-white cold of compressed ancient ice against the deep Antarctic sea.
Mt Erebus from Evans Bay · 1225 × 600mm · Oil on canvas · 2026
The Human Story
Mt Erebus — the southernmost active volcano on Earth, perpetually exhaling — seen across Evans Bay with Scott’s hut at its foot. A painting about the relationship between the permanent and the fragile: ice floating in water, a plume dissolving into blue sky, the continent that holds two thirds of the world’s fresh water.
An Invitation
Antarctica does not need advocates — it needs witnesses.
I have been there. I have seen the ice shelf and the Transantarctic mountains and the penguin rookeries and the inside of Scott’s and Shackleton’s huts. I have stood at 77 degrees south and felt, with complete clarity, how small and how fortunate I am.
If you are drawn to this work and want to know more — about the project, about what patronage looks like, or simply to follow its progress — I would be glad to hear from you.
Get in TouchFounding patrons · Scott and Susan Russell
