At the end of the Arctic season in September 2024, Elizabeth Bourne offered me the journey of a lifetime — to circumnavigate Spitsbergen aboard the expedition boat Meander. The plan was to spend 14 days exploring this wild archipelago, heading north past 80 degrees latitude.

Calling it a once-in-a-lifetime trip feels like an understatement. Spitsbergen is the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago, a remote cluster of islands halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. Its landscape is dominated by massive ice formations, rugged mountains, and deep fjords carved by millennia of ice and sea.

We visited historic sites like Smeerenburg, the 17th-century whaling station where Dutch and Danish hunters once wintered, and Gråhuken, where I stepped inside the cabin Christiane Ritter called home during a polar winter. These stops brought the past alive — stories of endurance and solitude echoing in the stillness.

From there, we sailed out to Nordaustlandet, navigating along the glacier-lined coast and through fields of towering icebergs. I witnessed ice calving silently into the sea, tundra dotted with hardy Arctic flora, and skies shifting pink over the Smeerenburg glacier. Wildlife was never far — snow buntings flitted among the rocks, walruses hauled out on isolated beaches, and I saw a polar bear feeding on a reindeer carcass — a stark reminder of the harsh realities of life here.

Throughout the journey, I created artwork, drawing inspiration from the ever-changing landscape and moments of stillness. Onboard, we formed what was probably the most northerly art club in the world, sharing ideas and creativity in this unique environment.

Flying a drone gave me a new perspective on the glaciers and coastline — the scale and raw power of the Arctic landscape revealed from above. I recorded the calls of a pod of beluga whales swimming near the boat using a hydrophone, capturing the haunting sounds of these elusive Arctic residents.

This landscape is stunning but also incredibly vulnerable. Climate change is melting ice and thinning the sea ice, threatening the delicate balance of this ecosystem. Even now, I find the experience humbling — I shouldnt be one of the last generations to see it!

This journey continues to shape my work in profound ways. The scale, the silence, the raw beauty of the Arctic — it stays with me. I’m still gathering the threads of what I experienced, trying to understand how to respond to something so vast and fragile through my practice. It inspires me every day, pushing me to find new ways to share the beauty of what I saw and felt. I want others to sense its stillness, its power, and its vulnerability — to understand why it matters.