Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25179
We had come to Russia's Hi gh Arctic to paint one of the l argest and most feared predators on the planet: the polar bear. As artists who paint predators in the wild, the polar bear stands as an icon to nature at its most wild and free. Over the course of our l4 - year artistic collaboration, we had painted polar bears before , but never on the ice pack and never at these latitudes . The polar bear is a truly wild animal that moves , hunts and lives free from the constraints facing predators that interact regularly with humans . Polar bears hunting on the pack ice show little fear of people . Our aim was to track and paint wild polar bears in their habitat to capture the essence of this free spirit . It was going to be a cold trip . Flying from London to Saint Petersburg, Russia , we joined an international team of polar explorers lead by the famous Russian-American partnership of Victor Boyarsky and Will Steger. We had met Steger in Minnesota whilst painting timber wol ves in 1997 - -he is America' s most celebrated pol ar explorer . In 1989 , Steger and Paul Shurke followed Robert Peary' s original 1909 North Pole route . I n 1987 , Will and Russian explorer Victor Boyarsky, along with four other explorers from the UK, China , France and Japan , became the first to complete the "Long Road" across the Antarctic Peninsula on dog team . The journey took over seven months . Victor has traveled to the north pole successfully 13 times since . We traveled with the explorers to Norilsk, in northern Siberia , and then on to the town of Khatanga . Walking about the town in the late arctic twilight , we were struck by how harsh and unforgiving this land is in t he grip of winter. The OLLV + S"41 Aa.TI\n ON Tltc "Oll-P temperature ranged from minus 20°F in the day to minus 40°F at night . The bleak, derelict buildings and soot- blackened snow of this small industrial town accentuated the cold. Many of the town' s native population are descendants of the Dolgan , a tribe of nomadic reindeer herders who travel and live on the surrounding tundra. AND PAlrvT W, L-D Po L-A F- e E A F-r vH THe-I l -rf'tVS rree sf ifu-r. It- vv~s JrTl1J trr &e ~ catd t-rif. ItAe,TAT tv O~'T\fl(" T~~ EjrEN((" . of Local trade revolves around fur , hats , mukluks (reindeer- skin boots) and a huge array of carved bone trinkets . As we prepared and adapted our clothing for the long trip north , we spent much time bartering for fur ruffs and hats . After a couple of days, we made our final checks , tested our kit and repacked our rucksacks and sledges. There would be no hotels or lodges from here on in . We flew northwest to t he island of Sredniy, where a remote meteorological station would serve as our base while looking for bears. Meanwhile , Will and Victor made another base camp, even further north . The plan was to meet them, roughly eight days later, at the North Pole . After a short ski to the Pole itself, we would then make paintings with the team before returning south together . We said our farewells on the ice runway and watched as the Antanov fuel plane took off. For the first time on the trip we were on our own and we started to focus on our objective for the next week. We thought only of polar bears . Over the next two days we ventured onto the ice on foot looking for signs and tracks of bear . In the evenings we flew with research teams across ' the icebound islands looking for bears and finally spotted our fi r st two , running free across the pack . We made drawings from the chopper door but couldn' t land due to unstable ice conditions. Painting from this proximity inside a chopper is exciting stuf f and we had to constantly watch for frostbite as the windchill cut through our clothing and thin ski masks. A few days later, we got the opportunity to land on the pack ice close to a huge male polar bear.