Drawing from Nature explores representations of nature and culture with the juxtaposition of a pencil & camera - © Lloyd Godman

Drawing From Nature - Artists Journal - Lloyd Godman

During 1987 I was invited by John B Turner to spend several weeks at Elam teaching and observing with the aim of feeding this into setting up a photography section at the school of Art in Dunedin. While in Auckland I was fascinated how the old basalt stone corner stones had been left intact in the gutters while the old structure and fabric of the city was torn apart to b replaced by new high rise glass towers. The natural material seemed such a contrast to glass, concrete and steel that was forming the new city. Once I looked closely, in the crevices there were small plants, water ran in the gutters.

The basalt, often pitted with holes, reminded me of the Secrets of the Forgotten Tapu works based on Blackhead, there was quite a difference in the structure of the stone. As I had access to Elam's Widelux panoramic camera I shot a whole series of images close to the ground placing emphasis on the natural elements.

I did little with the images, but looking through my proof sheets they continued to intrigue me. It was not until 1990 when I was looking at them once again that the natural stone appeared to be extending out of the synthetic structure of the city, becoming larger and I decided to extend these areas further by continuing on the lines through drawing. I experimented with continuing the rich black of the photograph out onto a larger piece of paper through pencils etc and finally found that pen and china ink worked best.

The process of creating the work

It was not until 2006, many years later the opportunity presented itself to combine drawing with photographs in the Equivalence series based on Wilson's Promontory in Victoria Australia.