Elements of Iceland

These 8 paintings represent what I saw on my solo trip to Iceland in August 2022. Iceland is known to be the country of fire and ice and on this trip that is exactly what I witnessed. Iceland is truly a mystical place where the earth seems to just do whatever it wants, while people live amongst it and admire it for its beauty. The cooler toned paintings that have blues, and greens represent the pure water that Iceland naturally has and the abundance of that make the country so green. The clear crystal chips that are on the paintings represent the ice that is very present even during the summer months. Going to ‘diamond beach’ in the southern coast of Iceland exposed me to thousands of years old glaciers that wash up on to a black sand beach. To represent that I used clear quartz chips to show how you can clearly see right through the glacial chips which is why they refer to them as ‘diamonds’.

   The warmer toned paintings represent the volcanic activity that I experienced throughout the trip. Although I was not able to see a volcanic eruption firsthand in Iceland, I was there when a volcano erupted and experienced my first earthquake. Iceland constantly has tectonic plates moving throughout the country which causes for a lot of earthquakes to occur with it being a normal thing that happens there. After watching the news, the next day and seeing the fresh lava pour out from the volcano, I felt like a little kid again watching the earth do something so fascinating. The red tones in the paintings represent the lava and the black obsidian crystal chips represent when the lava has cooled and makes beautiful rock formations.