Difficulties are just things to overcome - Linocut print (8x10in)

Difficulties are just things to overcome after all. -Sir Ernest Shackleton

This original, hand-pulled linocut print was pressed in black on beautiful letterpress paper. The linoleum block is carved by hand, inked, then each linoprint is pressed individually. The process literally hasn't changed at all since Shackleton's expedition! Due to the printmaking process (which is done entirely by hand), there will be variations in ink coverage. All materials are archival.

•Paper measures 8x10 in (20.3x25.4cm)
•Image measures 6x8 in
•Initialed on front & signed on the back
•Frame not included
•Paper = Cotton Lettra letterpress paper, bright white, 100% cotton

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●SHIPPING::: Your print will be carefully packaged and will ship flat in a bend-proof mailer. When purchased with a larger print it ships in a tube.  •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

IF YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT SHACKLETON, READ ON! Shackleton is my favorite Antarctic explorer. He lead the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition which would later result in the loss of his ship, The Endurance, and make for the best exploration story possibly ever. Gather round... I'll tell you the short version of the story. The year was 1914. Ernest Shackleton has just hand-picked a motley crew of 28 for a journey the men would not soon forget. Along with 70 sled dogs (and a cat for some reason), the team set sail for Antarctica with the intent of being the first humans to traverse the continent. A month later, having not quite reached the shore, and encountering worse conditions than they had planned for, their ship, the Endurance, was totally enclosed and locked in a solid mass of ice and wouldn't budge, despite constant attempts to pry it free. They decided to hold tight and set up camp on the ice. The following Spring the ice would melt, then they would set sail again. At least, this was the plan. They waited, then they waited some more. They apparently had a few good singers, and hopefully a few jokes they hadn't already told. Almost a year later, still waiting for the ice to melt, the ship started to creak and groan and break apart under the constant pressure of the massive ice and after a few days the ship was totally crushed and the crew and dogs were left totally helpless and stranded on a mass of ice with whatever they could grab from the boat before it went to its watery grave. The entire crew packed up what they could, with a couple of life boats in tow, and jumped from ice floe to ice floe and just prayed that one of the ice floes happened to be bobbing in the right direction, maybe towards Chile or a whaling ship or anywhere other than where they were in that moment, but you can't really steer an ice floe, right? For four months they did this... ice hopping while battling frostbite. Then finally, like you'd see in a climate change documentary in the tragic scene with the dirty sad polar bear, the last ice floe crumbled apart, so they jumped into their dinky life-boats and rowed through treacherous and freezing waters of the antarctic. They decided to try to navigate towards the closest land mass, Elephant Island, which was hundreds of miles away, across seriously rough and choppy Antarctic waters. Did they even have a sextant? I can't remember. So five days and 300 miles later, they finally arrived safe and sound on Elephant Island. Some of them had frostbite, but they were ok considering the insanity of their voyage. Nobody lived on Elephant Island and nobody ever went to Elephant Island except for seals, but at least it was land. They set up camp again, which was probably nothing more than a makeshift tent, and they decided to send out a small group of men (there were three, I believe) to try to reach South Georgia Island, where the closest village was located, but South Georgia Island was a staggering 800 miles away, and they only had their shitty little 20-foot dinghy to get them there. So before the 800-mile journey, they converted the boat into an "ocean-going" vessel by adding some scrap wood to make a deck, and giving it a nice thick coat of seal blood to try to make it waterproof, and they just started rowing. And row they did. In a very straight line. For weeks. Straight into a really bad hurricane. So the hurricane was so serious that it had capsized several large ships in nearby waters, but somehow, the three men in their tiny, wrecked, bloody dinghy, came out alive and afloat. After having survived the storm, they kept rowing in an even straighter line, and finally landed on a mass of ice two weeks later, which they hoped was South Georgia Island, but they knew full well it could have just been an iceberg or some other uninhabited island. Unsure of where they were, and knowing full-well that their tiny boat couldn't live through another second in the ocean, they started marching inland, traversing uncharted, icy mountain-terrain on foot. After a few days of hiking, exhausted and out off food, at last they heard in the far far distance the faintest note from a steam-whistle. They knew that there was a whaling village nearby. They crawled their way to the village. Recap: They had been lost in over a year and a half at this point. Finally, the crew arrives at the tiny village in the early morning, dirty, exhausted, frostbitten, with the gnarliest of beards, and Shackleton knocks on the door of a guy he once knew, and in a super heroic yet exhausted voice, he's probably all like "Hey sup remember me? I'm Sir Shackleton the Explorer I'm not dead can I borrow a boat I gotta go get my crew, later I'll tell you all about my difficulties and how I am still in the process of overcoming them." So they borrow a boat and they finally make it back to Elephant Island four months later, to go pick up the rest of the crew. It took so long because there were other failed rescue attempts due to the weather, and they eventually had to borrow a boat, from Chile I believe. So finally, after two years of being lost in ridiculously horrendous and freezing conditions, after eeeveryone thought they were dead... (scroll down for the end) • • • • The rescue boat approaches Elephant Island. The rescuers don't know what they might find... it had been 4 months that the men were stranded. So the team yells to Elephant Island from the boat "Sup!? We're finally here!" and a voice chimes from inside the shitty make-shift tent "We're all well!" Everyone in the entire crew is still alive. Every single one. They were literally using their last can of fuel. Like... another day of waiting and they would have frozen to death. Years later, Shackleton died, very much in debt, but he had some damn great stories. At some point along the way, he uttered the words "Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all" and 100 years to the day after he said this quote, I made a print of it. It reminds me that no matter what happens, at least I'm not stranded on Antarctica in 1914. But there was a cat on the boat. What happened to the cat? (Scroll down again) • • • • • Mr. Kitty is still alive and well. They say he retired off the southern coast of Ireland close to the Dingle Peninsula.

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