Depth/River

This drawing reads as a landscape, perhaps a topographical diagram of some sort, but the details do not add up to a coherent whole. Skaer based it on a photograph of a family caught in a flooded river. Although abstracted, some elements of the source image can be discerned, such as ripples on the river’s surface. Skaer swapped the stranded figures at the center for a dense grid of vertical and horizontal striations. Stripped of all context, the drawing becomes a study in perception, challenging viewers to mentally fill in the voids and make sense of the textures and contours.