Oil Painting on linen.

Size: 123 H x 181 W x 4 D cm

Concordia is the name for the confluence of the mighty Baltoro Glacier and the Godwin-Austen Glacier in the heart of the Karakoram mountain range of Pakistan. It is located in the Baltistan region of Pakistan, at 4,691 metres (15,390 ft) above sea level. The area is often used as a base camp for mountaineering expeditions on K2 and other nearby peaks. The name was first applied by the English mountaineer Aleister Crowley during the 1902 Eckenstein/Crowley attempt on K2 and comes from this location's similarity to another glacial confluence, also named Concordia, in the Bernese Oberland of the Central Alps. Mitre Peak marks the confluence of the branches of the Baltoro Glacier with the Gasherbrum branch arriving from the SE and the Godwin Austin branch arriving from the NE. It sits across from Broad Peak, the 12th highest mountain on Earth. The painting depicts the aftermath of an avalanche where tents need to be dug out of the snow. Porter's and mountaineers having just arrived are about to help to strike camp and move on to safer ground. The towering Mitre Peak looms above like a sacred crystal of rock and shimmering ice radiating light down from the heavenly realms. Man's insignificance compared to the power of nature is made starkly clear by the sublime lines of the rising peak above. The struggle to merely exist is made clear by the amount of equipment being unloaded and the strain to pitch tents in heavy snows. The images for this painting were sourced from Reinhold Messner's photographs from his expeditions to climb Lhotse in 1975 and K2 in 1979.