Painting at the End of the Ice Age

Picture

Copper River Delta from the Heney Range 2017
Oil on Linen Painting by David Rosenthal
Copper River Delta from the Heney Range circa. 15000 BC 
Oil on Linen Painting by David Rosenthal
Childs Glacier is a well known glacier near Cordova, Alaska located on the Copper River near the million dollar bridge and Miles Glacier
This exhibit is primarily a science and art exhibit.  The individual paintings can be appreciated as works of art that reveal the beauty in nature that has inspired me to paint.  Taken together they serve to illustrate the dynamic landscapes where the ice age is still ending.  There are groups of paintings that show the changes in the glacial landscapes over the forty years I have been observing the retreating Ice.  Glaciers surge and retreat rapidly in geological terms, so paintings from my short lifespan show significant changes over time.  It might be hundreds if not thousands of years before the Ice Age is truly ended, but I feel very lucky to live in this time when I can still experience and paint icy landscapes.

Being limited in my time on earth and seeing the ongoing changes in the ice, I have always been fascinated by what came before.  Some of the paintings in the exhibit I painted to illustrate what I believe would have been the way the glaciers were before I was here to observe.  These paintings were based on information from historical and scientific texts as well as extrapolation from my own observations.  I am an artist, so I do not have to be absolutely exact, but my paintings represent my best effort to describe accurately the ongoing retreat of the ice.
Photo by Dave Janka, David sketching at Columbia Glacier.