My paintings may never do
justice to what I’d seen, but
my desire to try was sparked
Suffering from artist’s block, SARAH MURRAY joined a world
cruise in the hopes of finding inspiration for new artworks
A
rriving in an unfamiliar city by
sea was a new experience for
me, so steaming into Cape
Town at dawn was something I will
never forget: the monumental Table
Mountain with the city curled beneath
it, fringed by two oceans – the Indian
and the Atlantic. I was on board the
Viking Sun in the hopes of breaking
my painter’s block and coming home
with sketches, photos and ideas.
I began my stretch of its world
cruise in Durban, South Africa. Huge,
bustling and colourful, this city’s Zulu
culture mixes with Asian influences
so the golden mounds of the spice
market jostled with the coloured silks
of the sari merchants’ stalls.
That evening, I found the ocean
light flooding in through the ship’s
huge windows great to work with, so I
set about drawing from my photos of
the market. The ship has an artist-in-
residence on hand to help creative
passengers and she also holds
workshops so you can learn anything
from knitting to photography.
There was plenty of inspiration
on board too. Viking Cruises founder
Torstein Hagen has filled his ships
with paintings, sculpture and more.
The collection is mostly 20th-century
Norwegian art and often reflects
either Hagen’s Viking roots or the
magnificence of nature. I spent hours
touring the collection with the free
Viking Art Guide app on my phone,
listening to information about each
work and the artist who created it.
Passengers loved a large oil
painting of a view through a window
by Marianne Wiig Storaas which was
instilled with peacefulness, while the
huge canvases of mountain storms
by Ørnulf Opdahl reminded us of the
uncompromising power of nature.
A huge screen in the ship’s main foyer
displayed works by Norwegian artist
Edvard Munch.
In Port Elizabeth, my visual
feast was on wildlife. New to Africa,
nothing prepares you for that first
close encounter with a giraffe. Their
markings are gorgeous geometric
patterns of warm yellows and browns,
and their coats were surprisingly
shiny, almost iridescent. We also
saw and photographed a pride of
lions sunbathing on their backs as
if posing in interlocking shapes.
I painted a watercolour to try and
capture their grace and strength.
The Viking Sun provided each
passenger with a pair of binoculars.
I barely needed them on safari as we
were able to get so close to the
animals, but as the ship sailed south
towards the Cape of Good Hope, I was
sitting by a picture window trying to
paint waves when a dolphin jumped
so close it gave me a shock. I quickly
fetched the binoculars and spent the
next half hour sketching a pod of
dolphins as they raced the ship.
Cape Town was my last port before
returning home. I took the cable-car
up Table Mountain and marvelled atthe city and sea, spreading map-like
beneath me in the sunshine. We later
visited the Dylan Lewis Sculpture
Garden and the Zeitz MOCAA gallery,
the latter newly opened in the docks
inside a silo converted by British
designer Thomas Heatherwick. With
100 galleries across nine floors and a
boutique hotel on the top, it is unlike
any art gallery I have ever visited and
left me fizzing with creative energy.
The Viking Sun has many guest
lecturers and learning about each
destination as we sailed towards it
enriched my experience. On the way
to Cape Town, I had listened to a brief
history of its Dutch, Boer and
Portuguese settlers, its farms and
game reserves, its politics and fears.
Absorbing information like this made
me porous to the experience of being
there. I drank in the scenery, the
culture, the shocking juxtaposition of
wealth and poverty; the shanty towns
jostling alongside secure compounds.
I photographed plenty of animals
and landscapes, but even better were
the images captured in my mind’s eye.
My paintings may never do justice to
what I’d seen, but my desire to try has
been sparked and strengthened.
Sarah travelled courtesy of Viking Cruises
onboard the Viking Sun as part of its
141-day world cruise which visited 35
countries. http://www.vikingcruises.co.ukon board