ON a low-lying iceberg, a harem of seals lounged under the Antarctic sun. Suddenly, a pod of orcas surrounded the floe, bobbing up and down—then withdrew, almost inexplicably. Then, when the worst seemed to be over, the orcas surged from the water as one, forming a huge wave that washed the beleaguered seals off their icy perch and into their predators’ maws.
Witnessing all this from the crow’s nest of a Royal Navy ice-patrol ship was artist Polly Townsend, then Antarctica’s artist-in-residence. The captain of HMS Protector had ‘very generously’ given her permission to use the lookout—resting at the top of three steep ladders—as a studio. ‘You could see the whole ocean, see the swells coming in, feel the ship move and you’d get this really beautiful sense of the ocean being a body of water—it’s a very powerful experience,’ she recalls.
The Antarctic residency
