Ghosts of the Polar Night

gouache, 12 1/2" x 19"

$5,000

The painting depicts an unidentified American whaler gently moving on a placid arctic sea.  While the water is quite calm, the cold night sky is alive with color and movement.  The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, are filling the sky with a beautiful display.  Today we know this beautifully eerie phenomenon is caused by fast-moving charged particles in the solar wind spiraling into the Earth's magnetic poles striking the upper atmosphere atoms of nitrogen and oxygen, mainly, and causing illumination as a result of the impacts. 

But this phenomenon has caused much uneasiness, superstition and myth for many thousands of years.  To the ancient Romans it was the goddess Aurora renewing herself each night to then fly across the sky and announce the coming of the sun.  To the Inuit, or native Alaskans, these lights were a manifestation of their departed kin/loved ones returning them.  This Alaskan myth is the basis for the title of this painting.