Title: King Penguins feel the heat
Year: 2024
Size: 795mm diameter
Media: Oil on canvas
King Penguins Feel the Heat
King penguins are among the most remarkable inhabitants of the sub-Antarctic. Unlike most birds, they do not build nests. Instead, they incubate a single egg on their feet, protecting it beneath a fold of warm skin through the harsh conditions of their environment.
Yet this extraordinary world is increasingly vulnerable to a changing climate.
In King Penguins Feel the Heat, vivid red and orange evoke heat and molten earth, while deep blues suggest glaciers, ice and the cold Southern Ocean. The contrasting colours bring two forces together — a fragile polar environment and the growing pressure of a warming planet.
The work was inspired by my journey to Antarctica and South Georgia, where I spent hours observing king penguins in their natural habitat. At Fortuna Bay, I watched them gather along the shore and move freely across the vast landscape. I photographed and sketched what I saw, fascinated by their colours, character and the remarkable environment they inhabit.
Back in my studio, those encounters gradually found their way into my work. Rather than simply depicting the penguins I had seen, I wanted to express the tension between their beauty and resilience and the environmental changes surrounding them.
King Penguins Feel the Heat became the starting point for a continuing series of works inspired by penguins and the polar regions — places where beauty, vulnerability and the forces of nature exist side by side.