Arctic Fox the Chief Engineer and Arctic Hares the Construction Workers

Hand pulled original Woodcut Print (oil-based ink on handmade cloud dragon rice paper)
Paper size: 8x10” / 20x25cm
Image size: 6x8.75” / 15x22cm
2022
Editions of 100 + 5AP
unframed
 
To keep Northlandia nice and cold, the Ice Queen orders the Chief Engineer (an arctic fox) and a team of construction workers (arctic hares) to build giant igloos to shelter all the precious glaciers in the country.
 
I have always loved the motifs of arctic hares and have been drawing and painting them for a decade, but only fat ones that look like cotton balls. One of the trip guides commented there are no arctic hares in Svalbard.
 
But there are in Northlandia.
 
This piece goes exceptionally well with Arctic Hares Building the Giant Igloo.
 
*I did see the arctic fox twice or thrice on this trip. The night before we would meet up with the entire group officially, we walked out of dinner to see our very first northern lights on this trip. We kept wowing all the way walking back to our guesthouse. Right before our guesthouse, an arctic fox ran across the road about 20 meters away.
 
Congratulations! I think you just saw your first arctic fox on this trip!
 
That was most definitely a good night.
 
**Each print is original, hand-pulled and may look slightly different from the image sample.
 
 
About Northlandia Arctic Woodcuts
 
In Oct-Nov 2022, I went on a month-long research residency programme “The Arctic Circle” in the arctic Svalbard for Northlandia, one of the five imaginary countries in my lifelong World of 2084 project. During the trip, I sketched landscape on site on small woodblocks and weaved Northlandia narrative into the composition and carve the woodblocks on the boat and in my room in Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost town.
 
The collection of 24 Northlandia Arctic Woodcuts was then be hand-printed in Hong Kong and launched in December 2022. These small woodcut prints serve as a starting point for larger works (woodcuts and drawings and more) under the Northlandia arctic narrative I will develop over the next decade.
 
 
About Northlandia
 
Northlandia is one of the five imaginary countries in The World of 2084, my lifelong project to portray a futuristic world in the corresponding year.
 
Drawing from diverse sources such as early arctic pioneer history, Inuit and Central American mythology, science fiction and children's literature, literary tradition magical realism and fairy tales, Northlandia is a surreal arctic tale of the precarious balance between human greed and the magical landscape, between the north and the rest of the world and between self-preservation and the rapidly changing climate.