Melt Stream, Masson Range, near Mawson, 1955
Drawing: Fred Elliott
Speaking with Fred today, I asked if he could draw where he walked through the pictures that he drew.
He’d told me that he moved mountains to draw what he felt about the landscape.
In his drawing, Masson Range, for example (to be pictured soon), he wanted to convey a sense of isolation, and ‘serra’ (jaggedness), and to lead the eye into the ice at the centre of the image.
He wanted to contort the rocks, to twist them, like the contraction that can happen in the palm of your hand, in Dupuytren’s contracture. He said that looking at the photograph, before starting the drawing, an image of a contracted hand emerged, suggesting a way to represent the feeling he wanted to convey.
He drew ledges where there were none, to allow a human to imaginatively climb the forms.
As the young weather observer, mountaineer and official party photographer, it will be interesting to see more closely how the various perspectives of these roles emerge through his drawings then, and now.
He’s drawing over a copy of this picture to trace such an imaginary path, and lines to show where he wants the viewer’s eye to go.
He’ll post these with a print of the photo from which he worked, which he took near Mawson in 1955.
It will be interesting to see what he has changed between the photo and the drawing, to work out how to animate the changes.
Can a sense of physical motion through the space be made?
Can the eye paths be animated?
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