Like the rest of us, artists usually stare put to sea, but Lindy Yeates has turned her gaze around
to document our ceaselessly changing shoreline.
to document our ceaselessly changing shoreline.
By Catherine Watson
LIKE many of us, Lindy Yeates has a secret soft spot for the Covid lockdowns. She was lucky enough that when the first lockdown was declared she and her husband were at their holiday house in Cape Woolamai. She’d been incredibly busy and suddenly she wasn’t.
She had a pen and paper. She started drawing one day at Scenic Estate, because it was within her 5km zone. She gradually worked her way around the beaches: Cape Woolamai, Red Rocks, Swan Lake, San Remo, Forrest Caves, Churchill Road, San Remo, Cowes, Silverleaves.
LIKE many of us, Lindy Yeates has a secret soft spot for the Covid lockdowns. She was lucky enough that when the first lockdown was declared she and her husband were at their holiday house in Cape Woolamai. She’d been incredibly busy and suddenly she wasn’t.
She had a pen and paper. She started drawing one day at Scenic Estate, because it was within her 5km zone. She gradually worked her way around the beaches: Cape Woolamai, Red Rocks, Swan Lake, San Remo, Forrest Caves, Churchill Road, San Remo, Cowes, Silverleaves.
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“It grounded me. It gave me a sense that this too shall pass. The birds were still leaving the island in April, the tide came and went every day. The drawings calmed me. It was actually a lovely time.”
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My Island Home, Berninneit Art Gallery until May 26. Open Monday to Friday 9:30am - 5pm, weekends 10am - 4pm. |
The results are on show in an exhibition of ink drawings called My Island Home at Berninneit Gallery. As you enter the gallery you’re greeted by a view of San Remo that takes up the entire back wall, a blow up of one of the original drawings.
Like the rest of us, artists usually stare put to sea, but Lindy has turned her gaze around. The view from the low tide mark to the dunes is one we only see when we’re coming back to our towel after a swim, and then we perhaps don’t take it in.
“My husband is a scientist, a geologist. We’d talked about how the edge of this island is constantly changing. Climate change will only speed that up.”
At Silverleaves she drew a banksia one day and returned the next to find it gone. A resident told her he’d lost 12 metres of his property in 18 months.
“I felt that as an artist I was in a position to hold that up to society. I’ve had people look over my shoulder and say ‘You’re seeing so much more than I’m seeing’. So my work’s a sense of celebration, a sense of stewardship, but also a historical record of a moment in time.”
Each work took up to 20 hours. She was constrained by tide and shadow. Depending on the position and intensity of the sun, a scene could look completely different.
She adapted her way of working to cope with the relentless south-westerlies. The works are on three panels, generally old maps and charts. She worked on them one at a time, first scaffolding the complete design across all three before filling in the detail one panel at a time, with the others held securely by a bulldog clip.
She had started in March-April when the weather lent itself to en plein air work but by May it was a challenge. “When I did San Remo I was wearing fingerless gloves, hat, scarf, three pairs of pants.
A guest at this week’s artist’s talk describing coming across Lindy at Cottosloe Beach. “She was so still we thought there must be something wrong,” Nerida said. “I thought she’d died. When we approached her to check she said, ‘I’m fine, I’m just drawing.’”
A graduate in applied art from Box Hill TAFE, Lindy has worked as a prep teacher, a music teacher and an actor. Her prints, drawings and collages have appeared in multiple exhibitions across Australia including the Rick Amor Print Prize, The Silkcut Award and The Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize.
She works with a limited colour palette – ultramarine blue and burnt sienna – and likes using old maps and charts as drawing paper because they are already foxed and will continue to fox.
“It’s a way of talking about the human condition without lecturing. Life is finite. We all deteriorate. There is beauty in that too.”
She is part of the Overwintering Project to raise awareness of the migratory shorebirds that arrive in Australia (including Western Port) in late autumn as the shearwaters are leaving in the opposite direction. Her images of the natural world remind us of the ceaseless pendulum between decay and renewal, from season to season.
“Migration – of birds and people – is a way of understanding this island.”
Lindy recalls the great John Wolseley saying artists should not be like colonisers of old exploiting nature to make a profit. “You need to receive from the environment. Don’t start drawing until you’re ready.”
It’s advice that Yeates took to heart. She loves the quiet time before she starts work. The sitting and slow looking. “I go for a walk. I touch, I smell, I hear, I feel. And then I might start drawing.”
Like the rest of us, artists usually stare put to sea, but Lindy has turned her gaze around. The view from the low tide mark to the dunes is one we only see when we’re coming back to our towel after a swim, and then we perhaps don’t take it in.
“My husband is a scientist, a geologist. We’d talked about how the edge of this island is constantly changing. Climate change will only speed that up.”
At Silverleaves she drew a banksia one day and returned the next to find it gone. A resident told her he’d lost 12 metres of his property in 18 months.
“I felt that as an artist I was in a position to hold that up to society. I’ve had people look over my shoulder and say ‘You’re seeing so much more than I’m seeing’. So my work’s a sense of celebration, a sense of stewardship, but also a historical record of a moment in time.”
Each work took up to 20 hours. She was constrained by tide and shadow. Depending on the position and intensity of the sun, a scene could look completely different.
She adapted her way of working to cope with the relentless south-westerlies. The works are on three panels, generally old maps and charts. She worked on them one at a time, first scaffolding the complete design across all three before filling in the detail one panel at a time, with the others held securely by a bulldog clip.
She had started in March-April when the weather lent itself to en plein air work but by May it was a challenge. “When I did San Remo I was wearing fingerless gloves, hat, scarf, three pairs of pants.
A guest at this week’s artist’s talk describing coming across Lindy at Cottosloe Beach. “She was so still we thought there must be something wrong,” Nerida said. “I thought she’d died. When we approached her to check she said, ‘I’m fine, I’m just drawing.’”
A graduate in applied art from Box Hill TAFE, Lindy has worked as a prep teacher, a music teacher and an actor. Her prints, drawings and collages have appeared in multiple exhibitions across Australia including the Rick Amor Print Prize, The Silkcut Award and The Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize.
She works with a limited colour palette – ultramarine blue and burnt sienna – and likes using old maps and charts as drawing paper because they are already foxed and will continue to fox.
“It’s a way of talking about the human condition without lecturing. Life is finite. We all deteriorate. There is beauty in that too.”
She is part of the Overwintering Project to raise awareness of the migratory shorebirds that arrive in Australia (including Western Port) in late autumn as the shearwaters are leaving in the opposite direction. Her images of the natural world remind us of the ceaseless pendulum between decay and renewal, from season to season.
“Migration – of birds and people – is a way of understanding this island.”
Lindy recalls the great John Wolseley saying artists should not be like colonisers of old exploiting nature to make a profit. “You need to receive from the environment. Don’t start drawing until you’re ready.”
It’s advice that Yeates took to heart. She loves the quiet time before she starts work. The sitting and slow looking. “I go for a walk. I touch, I smell, I hear, I feel. And then I might start drawing.”