Elizabeth Doidge Compare Scarecrows
   
   
 

Although I was brought up as a Methodist, and my brother in the UK is a Methodist preacher, I am not a Christian, nor do these images have anything whatsoever to do with crucifixes. I saw a scarecrow in a vineyard on the road between Mannum and Strathalbyn and became obsessed with the concept of a compositional image incorporating the strong diagonal pull of the posts and wires against the confrontational vertical and horizontal, hung with clothes and topped with a blank, blind head.

The perspective drawing for the posts took ages, some of the vanishing points being over there by the door at the end of a long piece of cotton, and I made so many adjustments in order for the whole compositional thing to hang together with eye level, balance etc, that I kept on using the original drawing rather than remake all the same decisions and simply come back to the drawing I first thought of. I did, however, change the position of the scarecrow in the second two, balanced by the stronger sky.