From a mountainside, Simon Beck’s snow art looks almost like an enormous drawing laid over the landscape. Walk closer and the lines become something wonderfully ordinary: footprints. With snowshoes, planning and a great deal of walking, Beck turns an open snowfield into a pattern that is easiest to appreciate from above.
Why the photograph belongs to the snow artwork
Beck explained the relationship between an artwork and its audience in the 2021 article:
"Most people will only ever see most of the world's artwork as photographs. Even with the Mona Lisa—probably only a minority of people have actually seen the real thing, but everyone's seen a photograph of it."
The account linked his reported engineering studies at Oxford and background in cartography with works that could require tens of thousands of steps, sometimes occupying most of a day. It also described a trip to the United States and an artwork using 77 unshaded triangles as a statement about countries criminalizing or failing to protect LGBTQ people. That number was part of the historical artwork’s reported message, not a current comparison of national laws.
How does Simon Beck make his snow drawings?
Beck’s background in cartography helps explain the marriage of precise geometry and open terrain. A profile of his working process describes how he plans designs and walks them into the snow, building shapes through repeated routes. The finished pattern depends on the relationship between the compacted tracks and the surrounding surface.
Look at the repeated triangles and curved outlines in the photographs. A single footprint contributes very little by itself; a carefully repeated sequence creates a line, then a larger form. The result rewards two viewing distances: the overall symmetry from far away and the surprisingly physical marks up close.
A landscape drawing with an expiration date
Snowfall and changing weather can soften or erase a work. Beck also makes drawings on sand, where a different surface and the arrival of the tide shape the artwork’s lifespan. The photograph preserves a particular moment rather than a permanent monument.
That temporary quality connects his work with James Brunt’s arrangements of natural materials. For another approach to the same beach-sized canvas, Andoni Bastarrika builds realistic animals from sand: Beck draws across the surface, while Bastarrika builds volume above it. Both make a familiar landscape worth looking at twice.
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Video and posts
(The Facebook post originally embedded here is no longer available.)
A large pattern is built from local decisions
From above, the finished work appears as a single organized figure. On the ground, each section must connect to another through distances, directions and repeated routes. That contrast between the whole plan and the immediate next step gives the project a second layer of interest.
Look for places where a line changes direction or meets another part of the pattern. Those junctions show how local choices contribute to the larger symmetry. The photographic viewpoint then compresses hours of movement into one visible arrangement. It is useful to imagine the route without trying to reproduce it on an unassessed snowfield: the gallery explains an artwork, not terrain conditions or permission to enter a particular location.
Continue with a related feature: Rice-Paddy Art: Fields Designed as Large Living Pictures.
Posts and process videos
A post shared by Simon Beck (@simonbeck_snowart)
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