Nicholas Hedges

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Spaces In Between

November 20, 2017 by Nicholas Hedges

Much of my work of the last ten years or so has been to do with the past, with imagining a moment in the past in all its lost ‘presentness’. The work I’ve been making recently with my 3 year old son’s drawings (‘Missded’) has thrown up what could be an interesting metaphor in that regard.

As I’ve written recently, where my son’s original drawings were ‘about’ lines, the transferring of those drawings to canvas is a process more concerned with spaces. In other words, the lines on the canvas, which echo the original pattern of the drawings, are lines drawn around spaces rather than a single line drawn through a space as in my son’s original drawing. It’s this contrast which interests me.

It reminds me of some work I did quite a few years ago when I walked a route around town, capturing what I could see in lists of words. When I looked at the route ‘drawn’ on my GPS unit I was interested in the spaces between the lines of my walk and all that had happened in those spaces – all the things which were part of the same moments captured on my lists, but which I hadn’t witnessed.

The past moment, in all its ‘presentness’, is like that line drawn in a matter of seconds across the paper, and history, the recreation of that line through the delineation of many empty spaces.

With a pile of cut out spaces left after the job of transferring the image to canvas, I started another piece which used those fragments, arranging them on the fly to create a pattern.

I’ve no idea yes what this will lead to, but I like the organic feel of the piece. I’m imagining that it will become a more intricate, finished work, and again, this will provide an interesting contrast between the piece made by my son (an intricate pattern made in seconds) and that made by me (an intricate pattern, derived from the drawings, but made over many hours).

Filed Under: Eliot's drawings, Tracings

Locks

October 25, 2017 by Nicholas Hedges

Following on from my last post, the images below show tracings I made of the same drawings made with my son, this time in pencil. There was no particular reason why I made them in pencil; it was something that seemed a good idea. Aesthetically, I’ve always liked pencilled lines and, as a result, I really liked these particular tracings.

As with the coloured versions, I stacked them in a pile and it was only then that I realised what these images reminded me of.

To me, they were like preserved locks of hair – keepsakes of people and times and as such they’ve become a perfect line of work to explore.

Filed Under: Drawing, Eliot's drawings, Locks, Tracings

Tracings

October 25, 2017 by Nicholas Hedges

When you’re a father, separated from your children a few days each week, the things you do with your children when you have them become especially precious. I find I take more photographs when I have them as they somehow sustain me in the days when I don’t see them. The same applies to the things they make; drawings, paintings and so on.

A few weeks ago, Eliot asked me to do some drawings with him, whereby he would draw on the page and I would follow the line he made. It was a very simple thing, but he loved it, and the images we made were lovely.

It’s drawings like these which become so important in those days when I don’t have the children, and, as I mentioned in my last post, these in particular seem to lend themselves to work I made a few years back, where I would stitch ‘images’ from sources such as GPS data (taken from walks), or old trench maps.

As a start, I began by tracing the drawings using the same felt-tips as we used in the original drawings. Given that these stitched works will, in some respects, be about memory, the fact these tracings are not entirely accurate, alludes nicely to the idea of memory itself not being an entirely accurate draughtsman.

As I drew them (the time difference between the ‘moment’ in which they were made and the length of time it took me to trace them also alludes to the idea of working to recapture a moment in the past) I piled them up and began to appreciate the aesthetic of the piles of tracings, where previous drawings would show through.

I’ve always loved drawings or paintings with scribbles and lines and these piles seemed to point to another way of using these drawings – another possible outcome. It was only when I did the same with tracings I made in pencil that another possible work began to emerge, one which was exactly in keeping with the idea of memory, family and recovering past times.

Filed Under: Drawing, Eliot's drawings, Locks, Missded, Stitched, Tracings

© Nicholas Hedges 2006-20

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