Not My Father’s Iceberg
A father-daughter exhibition of photographs by Joseph Loder Bryce and paintings by Phyllis Bryce Ely, 2018
I began this body of work in 2015 following the passing of my father, Joseph Loder Bryce. My dad was an aerial photographer for the US Navy in the 1950s cold war era. He served aboard the USS Edisto icebreaker in the North Atlantic. His ship collaborated with the Canadian Navy as they installed the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW Line) along the 69th parallel in the Arctic, making it the northernmost radar system at that time. The purpose of the DEW line was to reduce the warning time of a possible Soviet attack.
This project is a visual duet, akin to the well-known Nat King Cole/Natalie Cole posthumous duet of “Unforgettable.” I’ve created paintings in oil and encaustic wax in direct response to my father’s photographs. I don’t seek to copy his images. Instead, I venture into my decades old imagination of the moments he captured with his camera in the Arctic. Today, I live and paint on the south shore of Lake Ontario where I experience my own magical icy winters on a magnificent Great Lake.
HIS Photographs, my paintings
FATHER
The USS Edisto took my father and his camera throughout the North Atlantic to photograph official sea and air missions and the exotic natural worlds of Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland. He also photographed his fellow sailors, life aboard ship, and the extreme beauty of the Arctic landscape,its inhabitants, and animals.The Arctic waters were his work and creative inspiration.
DAUGHTER
I grew up digging through boxes full of my father’s Navy photographs, curating mini exhibits of my favorite images. His photos were my go-to choice for “show and tell” and I loved to share the icebergs, people, polar bears, and frozen ships. Decades later, I realize that the images, shapes, places, and people I felt I knew—but never personally experienced—became my visual foundation. I am influenced by my father’s eye for composition, form, and light, as well as his interest in telling stories inspired by place. These attributes are the very context of my own work.
After his death, I found myself in the box of Loder’s photos once again, struck by the old familiar shapes and simple black and white format. No longer able to hear his stories, I began a new conversation with my paintbrush. I didn't plan this and had no expectations as I painted one iceberg, then some polar bears, and then a ship…one by one his photos found their way into my studio and this body of work.
My first paintings were in oil on a vivid red ground that I typically use when painting en plein air. The vibration of the limited, cool palette against the red quickly appealed to me. I connected with the raw edges of color as I worked, excited by how the colors created an emotional response and opposing feelings of calm and urgency—feelings that, given the decades that have passed between our work, also connect to the urgency of climate change. I also chose to paint some of these works in encaustic wax because of the rich texture and intimate scale made possible by that medium.
EXHIBIT
As I finished each painting I tucked the work away, knowing I eventually wanted them to be seen with the photographs that inspired them. That led to a goal of pulling together a collaborative show, which became Not My Father’s Iceberg at the Main Street Arts Gallery in Clifton Springs, New York in 2018.
I am grateful to gallery director Bradley Butler for his early interest in these paintings, which he first saw in 2017 when an early iceberg painting (Not My Father’s Iceberg) was juried into the gallery’s national juried exhibit Utopia/Dystopia and was awarded “Best in Show.”
I invite you to take a look at my contemporary consideration of a decades-old Arctic landscape that once was my father’s place in the world.
See photographs of the exhibit: https://www.artsy.net/show/main-street-arts-not-my-fathers-iceberg
A look at Joseph Loder Bryce, 1950-54
