Antarctic Art> Oil paintings capture textures, colors of the continent

Antarctica is a blue place. It is a land of fluffy flatness where white-capped waves are suddenly stilled as they lap the shore and delicate icicles dangle off sharp glacial cliffs. Light comes to this vast continent at the bottom of the world in a sudden burst and settles in for a four-month stint. It bathes the icy continent in an intense blue light.

That is what David Rosenthal captures in his oil paintings of Antarctica on display at the Robert E. White Gallery at Husson College in Bangor. A Waterville native, Rosenthal has spent five years off and on drawing and painting the land surrounding the South Pole. In 1993, 1996 and 1998, he was selected as a National Science Foundation Artist in the Antarctica Artists and Writers Program. Rosenthal’s earlier work was displayed at the University of Maine Art Museum in 1995. Several of his paintings hang in the Edward Bryand Global Science Center at the University of Maine in Orono.

The work in the Husson exhibit was begun in 1996 while Rosenthal was working from the McMurdo Station, the “main logistical hub” for the scientific research that is conducted in Antarctica. The harsh climate makes it impossible for the artist to paint on site. The temperature extremes range from minus 120 degrees Fahrenheit to 30 degrees above zero.

However, over the years, Rosenthal has learned to draw wearing heavy gloves. He uses a 3-mm mechanical pencil always kept sharp to sketch on paper in a cloth-bound book. As he sketches, the artist makes detailed notes about light, color, contour and structural information in his own of a kind shorthand. He will use this information to create watercolor and oil paintings. Unlike some landscape painters, he does not paint from photographs.

“There is a big difference in the way we see vs. the way the camera records what we see,” said Rosenthal in a phone interview from his studio in Cordova, Alaska. “We have been taught to believe that a photograph captures reality. But, there is a lot of distortion in a photograph. I paint things the way I see them. It is more real than a photograph.”

Harold Borns, professor of glacial and Quaternary studies at UM, agrees that Rosenthal captures on canvas the Antarctica he has visited and studied for many years.

“What I like about his paintings is that they are very, very realistic,” said Borns, whose wife, Margaret, curates shows for the Husson gallery. “He captures the formation of the rocks, the texture of the ice. The atmosphere is thin there and the angle of the sun coming through it almost horizontally causes distortion of the light. The colors are spectacular.”

On his last visit, Rosenthal recalled, one color was more spectacular than the rest, which is why blue dominates the paintings.

“The atmosphere is very pure, which makes for intense blue skies of refracted light,” he explained. “The ice reflects the light from the sky and floods the continent in blue. The reason I do this work is to show people the beauty I see in nature. It’s great to be able to communicate to people about Antarctica through my artwork.”

Rosenthal did not set out to be an artist. He started out studying physics at the University of Maine at Farmington. Although he has taken art classes, Rosenthal described himself as a “self-taught artist.” Now he is a full-time artist best known for his landscapes of Alaska. However, he said that he hopes to return to the southernmost continent in a few years.

“It is very difficult to get there and to have the opportunity to get out into the field to work. It requires so many resources and takes a lot of planning. Some of the paintings in the Husson show of the Dry Valley were done from a C-130 airplane. Others were done from a helicopter. However, I was able to walk along some of the trails around McMurdo and sketch on my own.”

Rosenthal estimated that he has completed 250 full-size oil paintings, 3,000 to 4,000 small watercolors and more than 5,000 sketches of Antarctica over the years. He said that he has enough sketches from his last trip to keep him busy painting oils for the next 18 months.

“The Antarctic: Views from the Bottom of the Earth” will be on display at the Robert E. White Gallery at Husson College though Jan. 15, 2000. The gallery is open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.