Hobart Artist Creates Cover Art For Oscar Winners

Hobart-based artist Aleta Lederwasch has reached a global audience through a collaboration with the Oscar and Tony-award winning musical duo The Swell Season. Lederwasch was personally invited by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová to create the hand-drawn cover art for their limited-edition 7” single, “Forward / Impossible”.

The partnership highlights a decade-long connection between Lederwasch and the musicians, stemming from a spontaneous moment of inspiration during a Berlin concert in 2013.

Tasmanian artist Aleta Lederwasch is taking art to a global audience, teaming up with Oscar and Tony-award winning musical duo [The Swell Season](https://www.theswellseason.com/), who personally asked Lederwasch to create the art for limited-edition 7” single “Forward / Impossible”.

The record cover is a hand-drawn portrait of The Swell Season’s Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová completely absorbed in music, Lederwasch’s linework evoking the melodic bond that has brought the duo critical acclaim and international devotion.

“It always feels like such an honour to be drawn, especially when sensitivity and artistic expression feel so aligned with one’s energy,” Irglová said of Lederwasch’s art.

Hobart-based Lederwasch’s live-music works are a rare act of alchemy, the ineffable energy and soul of live music captured on paper by the artist’s hands (yes, both of them), which started spontaneously at a show in Germany in 2013.

“I always have pencils and paper with me wherever I go – you never know when you’ll need them –

but it was at one of Glen’s shows in Berlin that I first felt compelled to start drawing in the middle of a concert,” Lederwasch said.

“Drawing live music is a true meditation. You don’t have time to pause, you have to capture the moment – the music, the movement, even the atmosphere building in the crowd – you are completely swept away, yet totally focused.

“The concert was outdoors and it began pouring rain, but once I started I couldn’t stop – it was like my body dispersed, there was no thinking, I just let my hands dance like crazy.

“The next morning I woke to a stack of drawings that brought me back to the incredible concert more vividly than any photo possibly could.”

The following year, after one of Hansard’s shows at the Sydney Opera House, Lederwasch entrusted a number of drawings and a handwritten letter to the people at the merchandise desk, asking that the contents be passed along to the singer-songwriter.

“I hoped but never really expected to hear anything back,” Lederwasch said.

“Then, in 2023 – nine years later – I got an email with the subject, ‘Aleta? Hello from Glen Hansard’. I thought it was my brother playing a prank on me.”

It was no joke. Hansard – frontman of legendary Irish band **The Frames** and one half of The Swell Season, who rose to international prominence as the stars of Oscar-winning 2007 film ‘Once’ – was replying to Lederwasch’s letter.

“It was so beautiful for Hansard to reach out – and that Hansard had kept my letter and drawings all those years. His words were heartfelt and poetic. It was quite surreal,” Lederwasch said.

“Hansard floated the idea of using one of my works as a concert poster or an album cover.”

Lederwasch said the process of creating the cover art was an extension of live-music drawing, with the exhilarating addition of collaborating with the musicians.

“Irglová chose one of my existing black and white drawings, but asked me to add some colour,” Lederwasch said.

“One night I was working on it until 2am, adding colour, chatting with Irglová in real time over Instagram. It was an incredible experience.

“Then Hansard gave input, wanting a darker, richer palette, which was an intriguing insight into differing taste and aesthetics – maybe a window into why their music is so moving and beautiful.

“The last step was refining the graphic design with Irglová’s husband Mio (Icelandic music producer **Sturla Mio Þórisson**), who has been just wonderful to work with.

“It was a real collaboration between the four of us.”

Just 500 copies of the black vinyl single exist and are for sale on [The Swell Season website].

Art Takes Time

On 1 October this year, Lederwasch returned to hometown of Newcastle for the 20-year memorial of the 2005 Bali Bombing, of which Lederwasch is a survivor.

There, Lederwasch connected with old friend and internationally-exhibited artist James Drinkwater, whose moving musical performance at the memorial led the two to discuss the link between art and music, as well as Lederwasch’s hopes to work with The Swell Season, which had lay dormant since that 2023 email from Hansard.

“I told Drinkwater that I wasn’t sure if it would ever happen, but Drinkwater said, ‘Art takes time, it’ll happen one day,’” Lederwasch said.

“Two days later, on October 3, I got an email from Irglová, asking if I would do the artwork for their next release.”

Drinkwater said Lederwasch’s art is beyond words.

“Aleta and I would draw together as kids, she seemed to be receiving a signal from another place – possibly another planet,” Drinkwater said.

“I didn’t have the words for it then, I still don’t… magnificent and unexplainable.

“Lederwasch is both ethereal and unconventional in capacity to make the drawings move out of the picture plane, they pulse with rhythm and are emphatically sonic.”

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