A Painting of Ice and Fire

Everything in this frame was made by one of two forces. The rock is Hallmundarhraun — lava that poured out of an eruption around the year 900 and hardened into a plateau. The water is the Langjökull glacier, returning to the sea after years spent filtering through that same stone.

I composed this as a panorama because Hraunfossar reads like a long sentence: clause after clause of falling white water, punctuated by moss and birch, running the full width of the river. Above it that evening, the sky staged the same argument — a warm front from the west against cold rain from the east.

In print, the 2:1 format gives the piece the sweep of a mural. It is the quietest image in the collection from three metres away, and the most detailed from thirty centimetres.