Tatyana Kulida
Antarctic Presence
A Painter at the Edge of the World
‘Love comes to me by one channel only – the recognition of some beauty, whether mental, moral, or physical …’Dr Edward Wilson
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 fingers and played tricks on my mediums.
I came home with thirty colour studies made from direct observation, a notebook full of sketches, and material that is vivid, physical, and urgent. These paintings are being made now, while that material still lives in my body. The translation of direct observation into large-scale finished work must happen while the experience is present. Every month that passes is a month of that clarity lost.
The Project
Antarctica is the most remote landscape on Earth. Almost no one will ever see it. A unified body of large-scale oil paintings, originated from direct observation in Antarctica and dedicated to the continent alone, is attempting to communicate its beauty as a means of connection.
“For love to return to the world, beauty must first return, else we love the world only as a moral duty: Clean it up, preserve its nature, exploit it less.”James Hillman, American psychologist
Large-scale oil painting cannot be managed in fragments. A single capital work — two metres or more — demands weeks of unbroken engagement, built in layers, each decision informed by what came before. This is the kind of work that requires dedicated, uninterrupted time in the studio. Having self funded since returning from the voyage, I am seeking partners for the 18 months of full-time painting, beginning now.
The body of work spans three interconnected subjects.
Scale and Purity
The vast Antarctic landscape rendered at a scale that envelopes the viewer — the Transantarctic mountain range, the ice shelf, open sea ice, icebergs — works that suggest the erasure of the boundary between self and landscape.
The First Iceberg
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 viscerally.
What the eye sees is a fraction of what exists. This iceberg measured roughly 20 metres above the waterline — 40 metres wide, 60 metres back — but with ninety percent of its mass submerged, it extended 180 metres below the surface. From keel to summit: 200 metres, the height of a fifty-storey building. Its estimated weight: nearly 450,000 tonnes, holding about 450 million litres of fresh water — enough to supply 43 average New Zealand households for fifty years.
It was formed from snow that fell on Antarctica thousands of years ago, compressed into ice over centuries, carried by glacial movement to the coast, and calved into the sea.
The blue-white cold of compressed ancient ice against the deep Antarctic sea, characteristic fog as we crossed the Antarctic convergence, warm air meeting the cold current. The continent announces itself.
The Living Continent
The wild flora of the Sub-Antarctic Islands, and the abundant marine and bird life of Antarctica itself — penguins, seals, whales, and the vast ocean ecosystem that sustains them. Panoramas that require the viewer to turn and follow the sweep of the landscape, and intimate works that ask what it means to share the coldest continent with creatures entirely at home there.
Cape Adare
Cape Adare is home to the largest Adélie penguin colony in the world — about 250,000 mating pairs. Their guano stains the land a pinkish colour, which appears in this painting up and under the landmass.
The Human Story
Interior views of the historic expedition huts of Scott and Shackleton, painted near life-size. The objects left behind. The evidence of extraordinary human will.
Katherine MacInnes in Scott’s Hut
Katherine MacInnes stands inside Scott’s hut at Cape Evans — one of the most intact historic sites on Earth, preserved by cold and isolation since 1911. She holds her book Snow Widows, a decade in the making, in which she, an Oxford-trained journalist, traces the women left behind when Scott and his men sailed south and never returned.
Behind her, Scott’s objects remain exactly as he left them. His bed, the reindeer sleeping bag, his shelves and personal effects. On the wall, photographs of his wife Kathleen and their son Peter. The women in those photographs, and the women left behind by the other four in the Polar party, waited nearly a year after their husbands perished before they learned the outcome.
Snow Widows is not simply a work of historical recovery. It reveals what it means to love someone who chooses to die for discovery — what honour costs, what public service demands, and what we consider important. Starving and failing, the men still hauled their rock samples, because the spirit of discovery kept driving them on. The exploration age was built on extraordinary human will and collaboration, and at the same time on the quiet endurance and sacrifice of those who stayed. MacInnes restores that other half of the story.
The suffrage movement was barely a generation old when Scott’s men perished. Now women scientists, writers, and artists take their equal place in Antarctic research, Antarctic literature, and Antarctic art. The continent that once excluded them is now partly understood because of them.
All works are painted by eye, in natural light, in the tradition of the Old Masters and informed by the great Exploration Age artists. Studio works are built on oil studies made on location directly from life, with components drawn from memory, composed across multiple references and supplemented by photographs taken in the field.
The completed body of work will be exhibited publicly. A touring exhibition is in development, internationally and in New Zealand, beginning with a talk and exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in London, from March to early May 2027.
The Journey So Far
- 2017The beginning. A meeting with Antarctic scientist Nick Golledge starts Portrait of Antarctica.
- 2022Portrait of Antarctica exhibited at the New Zealand Parliament.
- 2025Canterbury Museum acquires three of the Antarctic portraits for its permanent collection.
- January – February 2026Expedition artist, In the Footsteps of Scott and Shackleton. Heritage Expeditions’ voyage to 77°S aboard Heritage Adventurer, with thirty colour studies painted on location in the Ross Sea.
- June 2026Antarctic Society, Wellington. First showing of works in progress, at Victoria University.
- August 2026Royal Society Te Apārangi. The paintings shown as the backdrop to the Thin Ice panel.
- August 2026SCAR, Oslo. Poster presented at the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Open Science Conference. Attended the full conference and the pre-conference Creative Arts workshop.
- August 2026Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge. Archive research.
- NowFull-time in the studio, Wellington. Developing the large-scale capital works from the studies.
- March – early May 2027Royal Geographical Society, London. A talk and exhibition — one for the calendar if you live in Europe or plan to travel.
- June – December 2027Back in the studio, Wellington. Full-time work on the large-scale capital works.
- BeyondFurther showings. In development, internationally and in New Zealand.
Where It Began
This body of work continues a journey that began nine years earlier. Read the origin story in Portrait of Antarctica — the series of oil portraits, exhibited at the New Zealand Parliament in 2022, that first brought me to this continent through the people who study and protect it.
In Their Words
“Tatyana has over the last nine years been developing a different approach for opening the eyes and minds of people to the beauty of the Antarctic region and what we will inevitably lose through global warming.”The late Professor Peter J. Barrett NZAM, FRSNZ, FGS (Hon), Emeritus Professor of Geology and Founding Director of the Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington; Patron, New Zealand Antarctic Society. From his letter of support, September 2026.
“Her oil sketches, done quickly as we travelled, are incredibly accurate at reproducing not only the sight but the sensation of being there. … She has a sensational talent.”Katherine MacInnes MA (St Andrews), MSt (Oxford), FRGS, author and former arts journalist; Writer in Residence, Heritage Expeditions Ross Sea voyage, January 2026
“I have taken thousands of photos on my 6 visits, but none of them portray some of these feelings as well as a painting does. … I find it refreshing that Tatyana’s paintings feel optimistic, whilst acknowledging the problem.”Tony Shields BEc, FRGS, FRPSV, FAP, fellow voyager and collector of early Antarctic memorabilia
“These studies transported me to the peace and awe of the two years that I spent living and working in Antarctica so many years ago. The studies touched me with their scale, silence, and light. … Antarctic Presence is a project that must be seen by the world.”Grant Avery, former Scott Base Manager and author of Messages From a Quiet Land
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 TouchAntarctic Presence a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Antarctic Presence must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Tax-deductible gifts for US donors can be made at fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/antarctic-presence
