Art and writing by Oxford based artist, Nicholas Hedges

Look, trees exist

"If the opposite of war is peace, the opposite of experiencing moments of war is proposing moments of pastoral"

Paul Fussell

This follows on from my last post - Goethean Observation: Pilgrims of the Wild, 1935. I made this observation after struggling with an idea I've had for a long time. The idea came from work I made several years ago on the theme of the Holocaust which led to an installation at Shotover Country park in Oxford (2009) entitled 'The Woods, … Continue Reading

Goethean Observation: Pilgrims of the Wild, 1935

As with observations of this type, the text is written almost as a stream-of-consciousness, as a result of which there might be a fair amount of repetition, dropped sentences, and parts that won’t make an awful lot sense! But that is the nature of the thing; to find a hook - a few words that might be the foundation of something else. Goethean … Continue Reading

Nazareth O

As part of my family history research (as described in my previous post), I chanced upon a name which leapt from the pages of an old parish register: Nazareth. Nazareth was the wife of my 8th great-uncle William Oakley (born in St. Thomas' parish, Oxford in 1673), and as things stand, that is all I know. But the more I've thought about her and … Continue Reading

Several Johns and St. Thomas

I've recently returned to researching my family tree - something I've been doing on and off since 2007, and have been following a line on my maternal grandfather's side in my hometown of Oxford. My mother, like her father and grandfather, was actually born in Reading and it was something of a surprise to find that her ancestors (on her own paternal … Continue Reading

Raspberry

Continuing with my research, I've gone back a few years to some work I did on World War I, specifically an 'observation' made of a trench map and graphite paintings using that map as a basis for the work. I've always liked the idea of using the map format as it articulates both the idea of place and of someone in that place. Combining it … Continue Reading

Tokens and Shadows

A while ago I made some sketches at Shotover Wood, tracing shadows with ink. Thinking back to these and with regards the work I'm currently making, I looked again at these sketches and applied the idea of the quick, gestural painting to the patterns. The shadow paintings, like the related video work, were themselves about absence, of time … Continue Reading

Patterns Seeping (II)

Following on from a previous blog ('Patterns Seeping') I've been working on a few preliminary sketches using some fabric I recently purchased. The idea of the work is to show how when one is looking at an object (or any relic of the past), the mind tries to take that object back into the spaces it once occupied many years - maybe centuries - ago, … Continue Reading

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