Near Drowning

Documenting traumatic ‘disasters’ within his own life, Richard’s Disasters encompassed within Lewer’s interest in social reality, explaining patterns in behaviours and events, and exploring the unsettling undertones pervading everyday life.

The artist describes the events illustrated in the lithograph as:

“happened at Raglan when I was surfing, they closed the beach because of huge surf. I thought I would be fine but quickly got into serious trouble...They called for helicopter and IRB boat couldn’t get out to me, too big, after drifting over the raglan bar I imagined finally to be brought in, the police giving me a right telling off. Will never forget it.”

For this series, Lewer employed lithographic crayon to make the original image on a metal plate, which was then chemically fixed, inked, printed and editioned by Adrian Kellett, a technician in the printmaking department of the Victorian College of Arts in Melbourne.

For Lewer the act of drawing is cathartic and meditative – he states that it is “a way of dealing with my own demons… a way of becoming healthy.”

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