Bering Slope (Alaska)
In Bering Slope, Chase Langford interprets the immense, austere landscape of far northern Alaska, evoking its physical character—the sweeping tundra, frozen ground, braided waterways, exposed rock, snow and ice, all compressed into a broad horizontal expanse. Northern Alaska’s tundra is defined by its treeless openness and permafrost, a landscape that can seem to stretch almost without limit toward the horizon. Distinguished by its restraint of color—whites, soft grays, black, sand and muted mineral tones are interrupted by narrow passages of pale turquoise and green. This chromatic economy feels appropriate to a region where snow, stone, water and low tundra vegetation dominate the visual field.
Rather than diminishing the painting’s energy, the limited palette heightens subtle differences in temperature, texture and depth. Black forms punctuate the composition like exposed geological strata or dark pools emerging through snow, while sinuous bands move horizontally across the canvas like contours on a topographic map. The turquoise passages suggest fleeting signs of water and vegetation within an otherwise subdued environment. The result is both landscape and abstraction. Bering Slope captures the quiet severity of Alaska’s far north—not through panoramic description, but through reduction.
