The "Brit a Day" series

What does a months-long parade of attractive British men have to do with fiction, you might well ask? These gentlemen have inspired some lovely scenes, part of the life I live in my head. Over time, some of these scenes reach out to one another and begin to form a story. For the present, each one of these pictures provides a writing prompt for me, a way to keep me writing with a sense of passion and narrative, even when the stories are not yet fully formed.



Saturday, March 17, 2012

A Brit a Day [#713]


Today's Brit is another hero from the centenary of South Pole exploration.  Another member of the team that died with Scott in late March 1912, Edward Adrian Wilson was a self-taught artist, a physician, and head scientist and zoologist of the expedition.  Wilson led the infamous 130-mile Winter Journey from the base camp to the breeding grounds of the Emperor penguin in the complete dark and terrifying cold of the Antarctic winter.  The Holy Grail he sought was a freshly laid egg of an Emperor penguin, hypothesized to hold evidence of the missing evolutionary link between reptiles and birds.  As seen above, Wilson would sketch in sub-zero temperatures by day and transform his notes and sketches into full watercolor paintings in the warmth of the group hut by evening.


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