How can one begin a letter about something that cannot be summarised in words? Something that will eventually become a whole exhibition? Something that will take a year, or several, to unfold? I suppose one begins by standing where one’s feet are. So let’s keep it concrete for now, and let the artistic part follow later, as it is still in the making.

Below are a few observations from five weeks on board Oden:

• I am currently standing on the floor of my studio—my studio container on deck four. When the ship moves, it rattles, jolts, pulls. It keeps me on my heels. I realise now that I have never truly understood—although I have always claimed to—that my body is such an integral part of my painting. Perhaps on land, I was always in such control that I was usually thrown off balance only by inner movements, not external ones. Which makes painting on land something altogether different from painting on an icebreaker chewing its way through multiyear ice. It shows in practice, and I have partly scheduled my studio sessions for sampling when the ship stands still. Lately, I have begun to embrace jerky and unpredictable resistance. It is seldom wrong to be thrown off balance, and that has shown in my process.
  
  
• A banal but funny example of how this can manifest itself: my computer password suddenly vanished from memory. The same one I have typed every day for fifteen years—completely gone! I was locked out for three days, trying over and over again. New connections are being made in the brain, just as water flows and finds new paths when a stone is laid in a stream, or as a painting changes when it meets altered external structures.
  
  
• Speaking of which! This experience is changing me and the way I see the world. To be part of a ship, a machine with people—scientists and crew—functioning as parts of a larger body with different tasks. In the beginning, it was challenging, trying to find a place and purpose. To try to work as usual, even though it was impossible. Fighting it, pulling in another direction, was draining. Everything you thought you knew you had to turn over several times, and I still do. I even dreamed I was hanging upside down in a train, being hoisted to the ceiling. It sounds unpleasant, but it was a relief to be set off balance. So much has been shaken, and when things shake, they swap places and form new constellations.
  
  
• I do feel poor in my painting, though. Even if, in fact, it has gone better than I ever thought—I didn’t think I would paint this much! All the panels I brought are gone, except for two I have saved “as a reserve, in case it feels like I would die with a song still in me” (tip: always keep two panels for the very last minute, haha). Jon has helped me to saw new ones in the ship’s workshop twice already. Imagine—a ship that has everything? It is an incredible vessel, I love it so much. It has been a gift to take a little of what is available. Shower gel is used as hand cream, and scrap panels are used from the dumpster instead of the handmade ones from Germany. I now have 26 paintings in the studio. Naïve, sweet, strong, raw, grey—leaning against each other under my workbench. One with a glued-on ladybug that joined us in Svalbard.
  
  
• But how does one proceed when one lacks the means to be precise and academic in painting, yet has urgent things to paint—things that must be done with precision, surgical sharpness, both technically and conceptually? Where there is no room for misunderstanding or the chaotic creativity of external circumstances? The practical limitations of painting on a ship—with many people, little material, and little space—put a technical gag on me. And this becomes obvious when I look at all these small wild-animal paintings standing at my feet, like gremlins. They are raw. Dirty, clumsy, and a little wild.
  
  
• I dream of my large, clean studio (though “clean” is a matter of definition), with expanses of stretched canvases, taut as drumskins, perfectly balanced with glossy rabbit-skin glue giving the surface a pearly sheen, with large heavy paint tubes, dry pigments, tools that don’t gum up… Yet how could I ever have thought this wouldn’t work? I have painted like an animal! And these small paintings will follow me into the large works back in the studio, as a bridge and as a constant reminder of the connection to this landscape once I return.

Apart from that, I thrive like a fish in water and could easily stay out here for several more months!

A few short notes:

• THE ICE!!!
• I have received help with titles—unexpectedly sharp poets are on board.
• I love the sauna, I will miss it. The gym has also been fantastic. The cinema, and my little bunk in my wonderful tiny cabin shared with the researcher Noemi, are also perfect.
• I will miss the whole ship. To have been on board a floating studio that has gnawed its way through the most beautiful and at the same time most melancholic landscape I have ever been in is an experience I am still partially speechless about. I am grateful that I—and my poor balance—have had this opportunity.
• I have a deep and strong respect for the scientists and the work they do. They are the heroes of our time. And it has been inspiring to work in parallel with them, and I suspect this will be reflected in the result.

Images, films, and if you have questions, see Instagram @saravidee