Art of nature

Art of nature

Here we present a painting made by nature. The model was the Napier Complex; the work was done with fine brash ice on the surface of the Southern Ocean, just north of Lützow-Holm Bay,off the coast of Queen Maud Land in Antarctica. The brush was the coastal current.
As is usually the case, the model is not far from the master: about 620 km, while the dimensions of the model are ca. 315×160 km. The size of the canvas is 100×50 km, about. 3 times smaller than the model. Everything is like a session with an artist. It’s hard to believe that this is possible, but the work was done on 11.02.2025 and the result was presented to the public.
The Napier Complex is a cratonised Archean crustal block, a geologically very old, tectonically stable part of the continent. The earliest rocks are 3850 million years old. They are some of the oldest rocks in Antarctica and among the oldest in the world.
About 1000 million years ago, this region, which was part of the supercontinent Rodinia and later Gondwana, was in tectonic contact with East India. The split occurred about 124 million years ago during the breakup of East Gondwana, and the region became part of modern East Antarctica.
The formation of the above-mentioned floating fine ice (68°S, 37.5°E, area _~ 1200km²) was caused by turbulence of a local coastal sea current flowing around the edge of the pack ice in Lützow-Holm Bay.
Within a few hours, and for the next few days, the region was obscured by clouds. When the sky cleared, the artwork was no longer visible. Further searches proved fruitless. Apparently, the work is irretrievably lost.