Micronesia is in the same region of the Pacific Ocean as the Marshall Islands, in fact, the entire region is known as Micronesia which includes the country of Micronesia. As a country, it occupies one of the biggest areas, although the vast majority of it is ocean, dotted with some 600 small islands and archipelagos. Only a few of the land masses have significant settlements, many of the smaller islands are uninhabited by people. Historically the region would have been an outpost for traders, and then became a focal point of World War II due to its strategic value as a naval military base. The biggest issue now, like Marshall Island, the Maldives, and other low-lying ocean nations is the steadily rising ocean. At some point, much of Micronesia will be submerged, with intense cyclone storms. Cyclone is the name of a hurricane when it happens in the Pacific ocean.
To compose this landscape I thought about getting away from the traditional landscape format where you see a sky, a horizon line, and some manner of foreground and mid ground elements. Most of the paintings in the series follow that general template, with variations on the azimuth (horizontal tilt angle) and points of view. With so many small islands separated by vast expanse of ocean, the initial idea was to represent each island as a sphere hanging in empty space. Then I found some glass marbles in a drawer and noticed how the patterns and colours inside of the marbles kind of looked like small tropical islands. In the end, I created a surrealistic scene where marbles appear to hover or float over a tropical-colour background of sky or water. During the painting I got a little carried away, perhaps inspired a little by Van Gogh's infamous Starry Night painting.
World Inspired Landscapes: Micronesia, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, April 2024
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