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TRANSITIONS

2018-2023

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Fortress Mountain, Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada

The Cold Regions Warming Team
This collection of artworks is produced by Norwich, England-based GWF Artist-in-Residence Gennadiy Ivanov, in collaboration with scientists Professors Trevor Davies and John Pomeroy. Cold Regions Warming is an art-science endeavour focussing on water security and climate change and is part of the Global Water Futures (GWF) research programme which is directed by Pomeroy (Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change, Coldwater Laboratory, University of Saskatchewan, Canmore). Davies is a former Director of the Climatic Research Unit, Dean of the School of Environmental Sciences, and Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
Over the last three years, the Cold Regions Warming team have collaborated on scientific missions to GWF field sites in western and Arctic Canada, sometimes in remote and severe environments. Ivanov produces rapid field paintings, and then uses these, photographs, videos, and his memory to produce large studio oils in an impressive range of styles. At every stage he is in close collaboration with the scientists to ensure that his painted messages marry, and are consistent, with the science. The scientists play a significant role in the written explanations and interpretations.
The Cold Regions Warming Team has mounted several successful exhibitions both in Canada and in the UK, including at the UN COP26 Climate Change Meeting in Glasgow, November 2021 and in the Virtual Water Gallery in Canmore, June 2022.

Pastel field drawings

The Transitions project is a Global Water Future’s initiative to bring together art and science in a new way to express the impacts of climate change. Much of the effort thus far has been focused on cold regions, especially within Canada. The artist has – participating in two separate visits with scientists – developed an emotional attachment to this stressed body of ice. The scientists have an attachment too – albeit different - it has long been an important subject of scientific investigation; it is one of the longest and most intensively-studied glaciers in the world. .

Drawing by the Fortress Mountain, August 2019
Cold regions warming, Whyte museum exhibition, Banff, Alberta. October 2022-January 2023

The Field Pastel Drawings, Watercolours, First expedition 2019

The Field Pastel Drawings, Watercolours, Second expedition 2019

Studio Pastel Drawings 2019-2022.

The Field Pastel Drawings, third expedition 2022

Title: The Requiem for the Peyto
Media used: Oil on canvases, 2021.
Dimensions: 100x80cm

Mixed media artworks on canvas, 2018-2023

I enjoy surreal painting. It helps me express my emotions; something which is important to me. I know that scientists also have emotional responses to what they are seeing and studying. But, in their public statements, they are careful to express themselves in objective terms, based on the rational methods and reporting of science. Because I am an artist, I am allowed to portray myself in a way which expresses some of my feelings.

Here I am below the current snout of the Peyto Glacier, amidst the new and barren landscape revealed by the glacier’s rapid retreat. Modelling by the scientists shows that the glacier could have almost completely vanished by the end of the Century. Although barren, the newly-emerged post-glacial depositional landscape does show tiny specks of green – the first plants are already moving in. They are shown in my glass. Also in my glass is the beige-yellow glacial silt of the depositional landscape, and cryoconite. Cryoconite, the scientists explained to me, is a cocktail of materials which accumulates each year on the glacier’s surface. It consists of ash and soot from vegetation fires, algae, bacteria, viruses, and seeds. It has been growing in abundance over the years, accelerating the glacier’s decline, and is washed-off by the annual melt-water to form dark deposits below the snout. It aids the growth of seedlings and moss. It is an important part of the greening process, driven by the quickly-warming climate. At what point in the future will the blue-white icescape behind me be transformed to green?

I also audio-record the sound of the glacier. The ice-driven katabatic wind; the wind-driven snow particles in late winter; the torrents of meltwater in summer; the splitting and crashing of the collapsing glacier. The record-player is my surreal expression of this. It is also a way, for me, to emphasise the importance of the painstaking recording of scientific data on Peyto the glacier. Observations first started more than 120 years ago, making it the longest-studied glacier in North America, and are continuing with the sophisticated instrumental network of Global Water Futures. In another 120 years there will only be the record left.