Melting borders (2018)

•

Title: 'Melting borders'
Year: 2018
Medium: Acrylic, ink, watercolour, oil pastels, papier-mâché, polyester and wool on canvas
Measurements: 7cm x 7cm

The polar bear or ursus maritimus is the world's largest land predator. Nature's biologically perfected killing machine inhabits the most aridly hyperborean areas of the blue planet such as the Artic, Alaska, Canada, Russia, Greenland belonging to Denmark, and Norway. Each of these countries is intentionally represented on the borders of the artwork to symbolise how these territories have banned hunting or established culling seasons to monitor populations and keep them within safe boundaries, leaving an estimate of 25,000 to 40,000 polar bears roaming the Arctic today.

Cubs when born are exponentially smaller than human infants and can grow a full human size in their first year of life if well nourished. Regrettably, only one in three cubs survive to an adult stage. At the age of four or five the female polar bear reaches sexual maturity measuring 2.1m and averaging 295kgs while males are 3.1m and 635kgs, both with a life expectancy of 25 years.

Despite our initial assessment polar bear's fur is not white since each hair is instead a clear hollow tube, oil and water repellent, which reflects the light, and in turn our eyes behold it as white although the bear's skin underneath the fur is black. This black skin, which attracts and absorbs the sun's heat, along with the hollows trap the infrared rays' warmth to maintain the mammal's temperature of 36.67°C when resting. Completely adapted to its surroundings, the mammal's hairs doesn't mat when wet, allowing it to effortlessly shake off water and ice residues. In addition, polar bears procure a 10.2cm layer of blubber which helps insulate them while hunting as well as to maintain moderate core temperatures during hibernation, rendering them almost invisible to an infrared camera.

The paws of a polar bear serve as large snowshoes reaching up to 30cm to aid distribute the mammal's weight as it moves over ice and snow. As displayed by the handcrafted miniature replica in the composition, the front paws are wide and round with partially webbed toes for a better stroke/paddle while its hind counterparts are elongated and moderately covered in fur to steer in the water.

Avid swimmers and hunters, polar bears have been reported to swim up to a 161km at a stretch in search of food. Polar bears primarily eat seals, portrayed as animated steaks. and get creative when stalking their prey. Noted observations described how these animals identify and silently loom over a seal’s breathing hole waiting for the animal to surface, as well as rare sightings which included bears spotted swimming beneath the ice plates for short intervals. These bears have a liver which favourably allows them to process excessive amounts of fat and vitamins stored in their prime source of food. The seal's layer of lard, rich in Vitamin A, helps seals grow and survive against hypothermia in harsh climates and water based habitats. A polar bear's liver thus contains 10 times more vitamin A than any other animal on earth to support his lifestyle and physiology in freezing conditions. Consequently, polar bears are being documented for their ability to lose/gain weight with ease and without causing stress related health issues or negative side effects which could hold the answer to counteracting long term diseases like diabetes and coronary problems.

This artwork is about awareness and like the trickster Floki's doomed fate I was in the process of writing the blurb and painting this piece when the viral video uploaded by a National Geographic photographer which depicted a starving polar bear surfaced the internet. Like a bitter sweet coincidence, it became abundantly clear I was painting something relevant which after a week was forgotten but begging to be heard and noticed. A scrounging bear who overcame obstacles and miles to reach that one abandoned bin outside his natural habitat in a courageous attempt to recover his natural self.
Humans are the polar bears only predator, as we have observed time and time again in each of my uploads. Overfishing which in turn brings less migratory schools of fish to Artic areas, and therefore less seals, make seals an increasingly rare site for polar bears, as well as rising temperatures which melt the ice and restrict hunting grounds for these mammals.

All across the Arctic circle, man is venturing into these protected boundaries to mine oil and coal provoking spills and detonations detrimental to the animal's environment. Polar bears with oil spills on their coat cannot regulate body temperature adequately or clean themselves since the substance is undoubtedly toxic and deadly poisonous, killing not only bears but its waters, food sources and diminishing its territory as well as putting the animal's status on the chopping block of considered "vulnerable" species. Elements within the artwork manage to capture these negative occurrences such as oil spills and overfishing through the presence of dead skeletal fish remains, skyrocketing thermometers, ice cubes and thawed glaciers.

These conditions together with trophy hunting have almost made culling seasons obsolete since they are starving and perishing to exposure to foreign agents such as man made pollution and its greenhouse effects. Moreover, the melting icecaps caused by rising temperatures are revealing prehistoric layers of permafrost which harbour in its glassy test tube-like chests untouched strain diseases, primeval antibodies and parasites, quite possibly relating to one or more of the five extinctions or life annihilating Armageddon like for instance the common cold and the Black Plague.

For what are polar bears but the guardians and keepers of the ancient and solemn to protect the remaining cosmos from its past, mistakes and miracles buried in a Pandora's Box made out of time and ice, like a dripping hourglass of unbiased fury. Will our greed and complacency free in our curiosity our own destruction?