Avalanche

This wide-format painting inspired by the Argentiere Glacier places the viewer at close range to the ice and snow, looking across rather than up. The background is painted in muted, dark grey-greens - flat, cold, and deliberately restrained - creating a sense of oppressive stillness and suspended weight. The central mountain mass is constructed using oil and acrylic applied in ways that allow the paint to fracture and separate as it dries, producing intricate fissures and crack-like textures that mirror broken rock faces and unstable glacier geology. The foreground dominates the lower half of the canvas in thick, physical applications of white and translucent turquoise, laid on with palette knife rather than brush. These heavy layers suggest compacted snow and glacial ice, with the blue-green tones that appear naturally beneath glacier surfaces where the ice is deepest. The paint is deliberately physical, conveying weight, pressure, and the quiet threat of mass in motion.

This painting was created to express what a glacier feels like rather than what it looks like. The absence of figures reinforces the idea that the mountain is the protagonist - vast, indifferent, and powerful. Rather than depicting an avalanche in motion, I wanted to focus on the moment before it happens: the tension held in snow and ice, the unstable balance of the terrain. Avalanche marks an important step in my move toward more abstract interpretations of alpine landscapes, while remaining deeply rooted in real locations and lived experience in the mountains.