When Thor Heyerdahl took his balsa wood raft  Kon Tiki across the Pacific  in 1947, he did it to show that in theory the Polynesian islanders could have originated from mainland South America.   There’s nothing quite like a bit of practical archaeology; personally, I’d have paid more attention to history lessons at school if they had explained the part trade winds and ocean currents played in deciding the course of human history.

When early seafarers set off in search of new lands to conquer, trade, treasure, knowledge, personal glory, or to escape from a crappy life on shore, they faced hazards and took risks that we can only imagine.  No weather forecasts, no accurate charts, no gps, no real idea of how long their journey might be.  But there’s one thing they didn’t have to face – waste.  Even in Thor Heyerdahl’s time, the oceans were still mostly pristine, but the problem of plastic waste in the oceans is a big enough issue now.  How big exactly?  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of non-soluble waste gathered together by the relentless motion of the ocean currents, is now almost as big as Europe,  a mess that can be seen from space as a shameful witness to human carelessness.  And there’s one gathering in the Atlantic too.

So what does this have to do with Kon Tiki?  Well, wherever there’s bad news there’s usually hope, and it manifests in many ways.  A handful of American campaigners are taking the lead (after all, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is off their west coast, and the USA gets through 1500 plastic bottles every second) and one of the latest schemes is the Plastiki expedition – a 60 boat made not  from balsa wood but from 12000 plastic bottles.  Plastiki recently set off from San Francisco to Sydney, by way of the Garbage Patch, to raise awareness of the problem.  The website is www.plastiki.com – it’s a bit mad, with great graphics and a day to day account of the trip, but not much in the way of background information on the reason for the voyage, though there’s a fairly sensible statement on their facebook page.  I’m not sure I’d trust my life to plastic bottles any more than to balsa wood – though at least anything made of plastic will outlast us all.  Good luck to the crew of Plastiki and her mission.  I’m going to give it a mention in my current book, which is gradually taking over my life, brain and studio, and is the reason why I’ve become so focussed on all things marine and ecological lately.  I’m still only on the first chapter there are six more to go; drawing board and table are already piled high with books, sketches, abandoned first drafts and assorted bits of paper.  Family are getting used to me babbling about plankton and ocean trenches instead of having normal conversation over the dinner table.  I will emerge blinking in the sunlight at the beginning of July and talk about something else, that’s a promise!

I haven’t drawn a picture of Plastiki yet, so in the meantime, here’s a krill..  one of the smallest creatures in the ocean that makes a tasty snack for the largest creature on the planet  – the blue whale, who chomps through an impressive 4 tons of these every day.

“A painting”, said a visitor to my studio as he pondered which picture to buy, “is a conversation”.  He chose the one, I guess, that spoke to him most eloquently, and I hope the dialogue is still continuing whenever he looks at it.  It’s true that the most effective paintings are those which leave something for the viewer to do, or leave something to the imagination; one brushstroke is worth a thousand – if it’s the right brushstroke.

I don’t mean that detailed paintings are always dull.  I used to paint ridiculously detailed miniatures after all, and I think they evoked a different kind of dialogue, drawing viewers into another world.  But however well a painting engages the viewer, it’s nothing compared to the Victorian view of art.  I went to a NADFAS lecture on Victorian Narrative Painting by Lizzie Darbyshire, a brilliant revelation on how to ‘read’ Victorian art, paintings which were designed in every detail to reflect and reinforce the values of the day.   Art was big business, and viewers expected to be able to read a painting like a book. 

One example, ‘The London Visitors’, by Tissot, shows a well dressed couple standing on the steps of a London landmark.  So far, so dull.  But the critics of the day were shocked.  The lady, it seemed, was not as ladylike as her appearance suggested. Why?  Because her eyes are staring out of the picture at the viewer, rather than cast down demurely and attending to the guide book her husband is browsing.  Ladies, apparently, did not make eye contact with men.  Her reputation is further tarnished by a small detail in the corner of the painting which we didn’t notice until it was pointed out – a cigar, lit, partly smoked and then thrown down on the step.  This, according to the Victorian mind map, meant only one thing; the lady had been flirting with a stranger.  This is a huge mental leap for us, but perfectly logical for the customs of the times, which dictated that a gentleman does not make approaches to a lady with a cigar in his hand.  Search for ‘London Visitors’ on google images if you want to see for yourself.

Enough of the history lesson, but it’s interesting to see how our visual shorthand has changed over a century.  These days we are as familiar with the icons used on computer screens as the Victorians were with their visual moral messages.  My own paintings usually have to tell a story – book illustrations for one, and cartoons for another.  The style couldn’t be more different from the classical style of Tissot, but I think that our pleasure in a good cartoon is because we can read it like a comedy sketch.  Here’s one I did for Practical Boat Owner a while ago (I can’t show you the latest one because it’s not out yet!)

I can’t remember the caption for this one… and you’d need to read the Dave Selby article it was attached to, but hopefully you get the drift!  Here’s another, more recent, to go with a hilarious article about crossing an ocean with a parsimonious skipper.  I think the caption for this one was ‘Dave would have plenty of time to regret eating that third weetabix’.

I’m so glad I’m not a Victorian artist.  Apart from the inconvenience of all those corsets and dresses, I don’t think I could do ‘demure and laydlike’, and I would so much prefer to make people laugh, or at least smile, than preach moral messages!