News Release

Smithsonian Institution

Press Contacts: Thomas Harney (202) 357-2458 July 31, 1986

Alvin Rosenfeld (202)357-2627

Public Inquiries: (202) 357-2700

ANTARCTICA WATERCOLORS EXHIBITED AT
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

"Antarctic Summer: Watercolors by Lucia deLeiris" opens at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural history on Aug. 8. The exhibition will continue through Oct. 31 in the museum's first floor Discovery Gallery.

The 33 works in the exhibition were painted while the artists was preparing illustrations for a book on the natural history of the Antarctic Peninsula, a project supported by the National Science Foundation, which administers the U.S. Research Program in Antarctica. the book, Natural History of the Antarctic Peninsula, written by Sanford Moss of Southeastern Massachusetts University, will be published by Columbia University Press.

deLeiris, a Rhode island artist and illustrator, lived at NSF's Palmer Station on the Antarctic Peninsula for four months, from November 1985 through March 1986, painting and drawing the wildlife and landscape of the surrounding islands. The peninsula projects approximately 1,000 miles out from the continent, pointing towards South America's tip and the distant Falkland Islands.

To make it feasible to paint on location, deLeiris made a tent with a vinyl window for protection--both for herself and the watercolors--against the cold. Most of the austral summer season was warm enough to paint outside, but there were times when she needed the tent.

On one day when she misjudged the temperature on the glacier, her journal read: "Painting on the glacier was a disaster. Starry patterns emerged on the paper as the washes froze in seconds. Another brush stroke would turn it all into colored snowflakes that would coat the end of the brush. Mixing paint on the palette would result in a lump of colored slush!"

View of the Tent on site in Wooville

Dropped off in the mornings, with only a radio for communication with the station, the artist spent full days on the islands near Palmer, observing, painting and drawing penguins, cormorants, giant petrels and seals.

"I came to know the animals well after observing them over most of the breeding season, and watching the changes taking place in their behavior as they passed through different stages of the life cycle," deLeiris said. "I also saw the changes of the ice, the weather and the lights as the season progressed. The scenery was constantly changing, varying from day to day and from hour to hour with the changing light and conditions. It was a painter's paradise."

Lucia and the Adeleis Penguins in Antarctica

Lucia deLeiris' previous work includes three sets of posters produced for the National Geographic Society (1982-1983) and drawings made for animation in the color film, "The Last chance," prepared for the Smithsonian's National Zoo (1979)."

For more on Lucia deLeiris' technique see:

About Painting in Antarctica