ice and fog, blue and gray and white: process

                                                                                      glass experiment -- sky, fog, ice

Inspiration is fickle. It refuses to come when  beckoned. But when decides to appear, it takes over, and occupies and inordinate space in conscious thought. And that's not a bad thing.

My current obsession is a then-top-secret mission the Navy undertook in 1951-1952. The goal was to establish a military base in Thule, Greenland (with the permission of Denmark), 800 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The mission was so startling that it made the cover of Life magazine: The Biggest Secret Operation Since D-Day.

My dad was a division commander of a group of ships that forged the icy and foggy waters during that mission, a perilous journey to be sure. That I know, as I have a diary he kept onboard:

He wrote of ice and fog, fog and ice. And in his saga, he created a record that offers a poignant and  precious insight into his character.

This inspires me, and my mind is overflowing with ideas of how I can interpret this in art -- fog, ice, the Arctic, and of course, those ships.

 What comes to mind, of course, as I sit in my native and drought-stricken California, is global warming, and the challenges to the ice, and all that flows from that.

So I am thinking of blue and gray and white and black and layers and transparency and depth and...it is that delightful part of the process in which the ideas present themselves in bursts of energy. It's a good thing, and I'll post on those bursts as they arrive and are tested.

The blue piece at the top of this post is my first test, a gradation of solid color. Who knows what's next?