New Kesler Woodward Painting

The Face of Childs Glacier
©Kesler Woodward 2005
Watercolor
20 1/2" x 28" (image)

In this new painting, two of the three rafts of the Copper River Stories Expedition are dwarfed by the face of Childs Glacier, which spills into, looms above, and is continuously undercut by the mighty Copper River, near Cordova, Alaska.

Images and experiences often take considerable time to work themselves down to a deep enough level in my consciousness that I feel like I have something to say about them visually.  In the summer of 2003,  I joined well-known Alaskan writers Frank Soos, Sherry Simpson, and John Morgan, as well as a number of student artists and writers, on a ten-day, hundred mile raft trip down the Copper River from Chitina to Cordova.  Organized by Nancy Cook of the Wrangell Mountains Center and Thea Agnew of Friends of Kennicott, the voyage traversed spectacular country and was an amazing experience.  Each day we floated down the huge, fast-moving river into new territory.  We saw only one other person outside our group from the time we left the Chitina area until we approached the vicinity of Childs Glacier, near the expedition's end. 

I made a number of drawings and small oil pastel images while on the voyage, and several small paintings immediately after, but surprisingly few finished works, given the intensity of the experience.  Then one day, just a couple of weeks ago, I found myself thinking about the trip,  and I very much wanted to try to do something with the memory of being overwhelmed by the scale of that wall of ice, calving giant icebergs into the silty water as we passed close by.

I have very, very rarely included people in my landscape images.  But I felt here that the only way to convey the sense of our tiny scale in relation to the glacier’s face was to include the rafts, positioned with our oars to watch the ice mountain as we were swept sideways by it, downstream at more than ten knots in the current.

Comments

[Art Collection]

From afar the painting just looks like a photo. Great job there!

Kris

[Grijsz]

Great image ! Thank you. I know mountains to paint, even glaciers is a pretty task.