Artist erases her drawings of endangered species over four years for Extinction Studies project

Lucienne Rickard’s art project Extinction Studies is coming to an end after more than four years. (ABC News: Kate Nickels)

For the past four years, Tasmanian artist Lucienne Rickard has spent her days in a museum foyer in full public view drawing detailed pictures of animals.

She jokes that she’s the only exhibit that talks back.

The floor is covered in pencil shavings and has turned black from a thick layer of graphite.

Some of her drawings have taken three months to draw in painstaking detail, but as her project Extinction Studies comes to an end she will have nothing to show for it.

“Someone got me to calculate the dollar value on how many drawings I’ve erased and it’s over $100,000 now, if I sold them,” Dr Rickard said.

Each drawing of an extinct or endangered species gets erased as soon as it’s finished, symbolising the fragility of so many species and the finality of extinction.

“I’ll talk to people about whatever I’m drawing,” she said.

“I try and tell them as much about the species as I’ve learnt.”

Dr Rickard said she didn’t know if she had made a difference to the extinction crisis.

“That’s the weirdest thing to say at this point after devoting four-and-a bit years of my life to it,” she said.

“The only thing I can say for sure is that I’ve had thousands and thousands of conversations with people about species often they’ve never heard about and issues they’re now aware of.”

Erasing to highlight the problem

Dr Rickard’s Extinction Studies project came about after she watched a Four Corners episode about the dire state of Australia’s environment.

“I felt really rattled by how many species we were losing and the fact that we were leading the world in mammal extinctions,” she said.

Dr Rickard pitched the idea the next morning, and two weeks later she was in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery drawing.

“They got me started before I could change my mind,” she said.

Her original idea was to draw a species and then set the work on fire.

Instead, she erases the species before drawing another on the same piece of paper, creating a layering effect and only traces of past creatures can be seen.

Dr Rickard spends six hours a day drawing, blurring the lines between art and performance.

It was originally conceived as a 12-month project highlighting the critical issue of extinction, funded from the Detached Cultural Organisation, but the popular exhibit was extended.

“I think four and a bit years is long enough to be erasing all my work,” she said.

“I’m wrapping up the project but we are still seeing far too many extinctions and species moving into the critically endangered category.”

‘Underdogs’ represented

In four years Dr Rickard has drawn and erased 60 species using only three pieces of paper.

“You can generally get 25-30 drawings on one piece of paper before it’s a bit too fluffy to keep using,” she said.

A drawing of the extinct Xerces blue butterfly from California took three months to complete, or 360 hours of work.

The piece was incredibly detailed, with the artist drawing 112,000 individual scales.

“I was drawing dots for three months basically, and then it took five and a half minutes to erase it,” Dr Rickard said.

“It was the erasing to end all erasings, people were so upset.”

During the course of Extinction Studies, Dr Rickard tried to choose species that are less glamorous to draw attention to them.

There has been an earwig, a newt, a bat, fish, snakes and lizards.

“I like the underdogs and the little guys,” she said.

“I love tiny species that we neglect to look at closely, because there’s so much beauty and interest in the world that human beings miss a lot of the time.”

The final erasing

The critically endangered red handfish is Dr Rickard’s final species, and she is drawing 100 individual handfish to symbolise how many are left in the wild.

The handfish is found only in waters off south-east Tasmania.

“If I was naming our new football team I think I’d call them the handfish,” Dr Rickard said.

“People are reluctant to emphasise with aquatic species, we love the cute fluffy land-based species, but we skim over the less photogenic species.”

Dr Rickard has also drawn species that have been in the media, like the grey nurse shark and Tasmania’s Maugean skate and orange-bellied parrot.

The grey nurse shark was chosen due to a survey that found a large amount of fish-and-chip-shop flake was endangered species of sharks.

Dr Rickard said it could spark a conversation with a museum-goer who might not have heard of the issues a species was facing.

“I loved the conversations I was having with people,” she said.

“I’m not a scientist but I do as much reading as I can. I want people to know how cool these animals and plants and insects are.

“I hope that the people I’ve had those conversations with are making small changes in their lives and are being aware of the problem a little bit more.”

Dr Rickard’s next project involves larger-scale drawing and erasing at a museum in Denmark, this time focusing on an endangered curlew.

The handfish will be erased this week as the project wraps up.