the Artist & the Fly Fisher
Rob Sloane appreciates a new book by Pieter Zaadstra.
The Artist & the Fly Fisher is unlike any other book on my fishing shelves. It’s an immigrant artist’s impression of the Tasmanian fly fishery, its environment and its participants. As a newcomer to Tasmania and to fly fishing, Pieter Zaadstra, the artist, has captured a great deal of their essence in words but more particularly in his beautifully reproduced paintings and sketches. Often it’s said that the observer sees more of the game—it takes an outsider to show the true value of the things we do and love.
I’ve met and known a number of English, Australian and New Zealand angling artists over the years, and all were driven anglers. Pieter Zaadstra is different, being commissioned in a sense to produce a portfolio of artworks about Tasmanian fly fishing. This unusual though captivating book is the result.
The commissioned works start with a study of Brumbys Creek then follow a well-trodden angling path via the Poatina Highway to Miena, Great Lake and beyond. The book is as much, if not more, a commentary on art as it is on fly fishing. As Pieter told me, putting ‘the Artist’ first in the title was deliberate, although the original concept title for the book was the other way around.
Surprisingly it was not the sketches and paintings of aquatic insects and feeding trout that had me pausing and showing the book to others. It was the simplest pictures of highland shack life that evoked my interest—the Miena Sketchbook, and buildings at Little Pine and Flinstone Drive—even a power pole was revealed in a different light. There is definitely something about the Tasmanian highlands that this artist stirs within. The portrait of legendary guide Bill Beck was, for me, another standout painting, but then any artist who can make the concrete bridge over Liawenee Canal seem appealing deserves our praise!
Interestingly Pieter Zaadstra alludes to the ‘overwhelming’ challenge of capturing the essence of the Western Lakes environment in full sun. Anyone who has tried to photograph this stark place or describe in words its unusual appeal will understand the difficulties. I’m not sure that Hackett and Harris (In Season Tasmania) would agree with some of the artist’s opinions about the limitations of words and photographs to do the job, but it is interesting to compare these two recent Tasmanian books. Both are landmark Tasmanian fly fishing publications in my view.
The commentary in the book includes some revealing passages about weather, mood and light, as only a talented artist and writer could describe. ‘The weather changes suddenly. The new mood adds a different light, a scurry of cloud, a hurrying shadow-scape, a wrap around and surprisingly chill blow. That’s highland life—a daily surprise to make you feel insignificant in the grand scheme of things.’
This is, as I’ve suggested, a book perhaps more about art than about fly fishing. Even though my sister is a brilliant artist and I have a son partway through art school, I didn’t fully understand some of Pieter Zaadstra’s explanations about sketching and painting techniques and the complex relationships between light, colour value, hue and tone in his work, but I’m motivated to learn more, which surely is the point of the whole exercise
Pieter sums it up much better than I can: ‘Fly fishers live inside a work of art that envelops them all.’
The Artist & the Fly Fisher may not be a book for the casual reader, but it is definitely one for those with a keen interest in fishing literature, photography and art. I can’t tell you how many pages it is, because they aren’t numbered—which is unusual in itself. The book is most widely available in a soft cover format ($44.95) which can now be ordered direct from FlyLife head office or via our website.