These are paintings from David’s time in Antarctica, where he spent more than 60 months working as science support for the National Science Foundation or as a participant in the foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. Most of David’s time was spent at McMurdo Station and Palmer Station, with many trips to South Pole and field camps. Travel in Antarctica was accomplished by hiking, skiing, snow machine, and other tracked vehicles, or by air for more distant locations. The Antarctic paintings in this exhibition are based on the aerial views David witnessed from Lockheed C-130 aircraft as he flew above the great ice sheets that still cover most of the continent.

Antarctic ice today is much like what covered most of Southcentral Alaska during the height of the Ice Age. 15,000 years ago, the many mountains higher than 12,000 feet along the Gulf Coast of Alaska would have stuck up through the Cordilleran ice sheet. The mountains of the Alaska Range, Wrangell St. Elias Range, and the Chugach Mountains accumulated snow which turned into glaciers flowing in the direction of the ocean, merging into ice fields and ice shelves along the coast. It would have looked like these landscapes David observed in Antarctica.

Please proceed to audio tour location 8.