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Synergy
Jock Young
As a painter, I have been interested for many years in the effect
of light and wind on the surface of water. When I was teamed with
George Cresswell for this project it allowed me to examine his broadscale
satellite imagery in aesthetic terms. The painting I developed is
actually from a series of satellite views of the Eastern Australian
Current and shows its pale waters extending into the deep rich,
colder water of the Southern Ocean.
George Cresswell
Jock's painting is a representation, from high in the sky, of the
East Australian Current (EAC) going southward in the Tasman Sea
and feeding into an anticlockwise eddy. The painting extends southward
from near Papua New Guinea down to the latitude of Bass Strait and
from near the Australian eastward into the middle of the Tasman
Sea. The painting was no doubt inspired by the satellite images
of sea surface temperature that we routinely process and interpret
for our research, for clients, and for public relations, such as
providing information to competitors in the Sydney to Hobart yacht
race. Jock has used light cream/green to represent the EAC, and
blue to represent the resident waters of the Tasman Sea. He has
realistically shown patches of cloud — always a nuisance for
us, since we need clear skies for the radiometers on the satellites
to detect the heat coming up from the land and the sea.
The EAC is one of the major current systems in the world, along
with the Gulf Stream, the Kuroshio off Japan, the Brazil Current,
and the Agulhas Current off southern Africa. The current drives
upwelling of nutrient-rich waters at its edge and these photosynthesize
in the sunlight and can be detected by satellite. I am not an artist,
nor am I one to write about art, but, like most of us, I enjoy looking
at paintings. Is there just a little of Claude Monet in Jock's colours
and brush strokes?
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Title: Eastern Australian Current 2002 (detail).
Click image for larger view.
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