Study for 'Mullet Creek'

Ana Pollak is a Sydney-based artist whose work encompasses drawing, painting and sculpture. Influences include Chinese calligraphy, which she studied in 2001-03; she first studied drawing at the Byam Shaw School in London in 1976, with later studies at the Alexander Mackie School of Art and the National Art School, among others. This work was one of several preparatory studies for Pollak's much larger Dobell Prize-winning drawing (also titled 'Mullet Creek'), and was drawn in situ up the nearby Mullet Creek. She used graphite and a rubber on rice paper.

The prize-winning drawing 'Mullet Creek' was from a series on oyster leases in the Hawkesbury River. In a letter to the Gallery (8/9/07) on the background to that work, the artist wrote:
"The oyster farm series … pays homage to a changing landscape as the old timber stakes that were put in place by generations of oyster farmers are being removed. All in a bid to counter the QX virus with new farming practices and strains of oysters … This work is about the gentle way the skeletal frameworks of the oyster leases at low tide delineate the vast estuarine spaces of the Hawkesbury River. These oyster racks provided the springboard for the recent revival in my drawing practice since 2006."