COLTON -- The artwork of a new Colton resident will hang in the U.S. embassy in Helsinki, Finland.

The U.S. State Department picked Robert Selby’s painting “Chukchi Reach,” which depicts a crew from the U.S. Coast Guard ice breaker Healy moving scientists among ice floes in the Arctic Ocean.

The scientists were doing environmental research in anticipation of oil drilling, Selby said.

Selby was on assignment with the Coast Guard when he created the work, he said.

“I was deployed on another small craft to observe the data collection as a part of my mission,” he said.

The painting received "Best in Show" at the annual Coast Guard Art Program exhibition at the Salmagundi Club in New York in 2014, according to Selby.

“I was informed today that the painting was selected for display at next week's Commandant's Ball in Washington, D.C. and will be shipped to Helsinki thereafter,” he said. “Finland has shown great interest in Arctic affairs especially with regard to climatic issues.”

Selby has spent most of his career as a professional artist and illustrator.

In more recent years, he was an art professor and taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and retired this past spring after 12 years at Champlain College in Burlington, Vt.

They moved to Colton earlier this year when his wife took a position as executive director for major gifts at St. Lawrence University.