Elisa McLeod is an emerging Australian contemporary artist from Bathurst, NSW. Elisa’s delicate, fine pen monochromatic drawings are a culmination of her passion for detailed patterns created in nature, and her early career as a traumatic loss counsellor.

The unique techniques she uses to create her artworks, are like stitching the fragile human psyche back together, while life pushes and pulls us into different directions. And, just like the environment creates both flow and movement in nature, it also erodes nature and creates permanent markings over time. There is a duality between this and mending traumatic experiences that humans face. Elisa captures this duality in her drawings.

Her artworks are often described as topographical drawings of nature, and monochromatic illusions; the viewer is drawn in and wants to find images and meaning. Each artwork is created using tiny pen strokes, known as mark markings. These marks capture the illusion of movement, and take hundreds of hours to create. Despite the length of time and patience it takes to complete each artwork, Elisa describes the creative process as an alchemy – in the most part, it’s free flowing. Elisa is guided by where the pen takes her, rather than controlling the process. In some of her artworks, she literally puts pen to paper and the end result is just as big a surprise to her, as it is to the viewer.