I've just had three artworks in the Victor Harbor Art Show, the largest show in our state I believe. There were over 1,500 paintings and the judge awarded a winner and 12 "Highly Commended" awards. This piece, "Homeless" won one of those "Highly Commended"s. I understand that it's a fairly confronting image and highly unlikely to sell, but my aim was to tell a story with it and create an "It could happen to you too" moment. Let's face it, with the recent devastation in Haiti, that too could happen anywhere and it's one of my goals to educate people not to judge the homeless and disadvantaged but in fact to help and be part of the solution.
Artist Statement
I was born in Kampala, Uganda, and lived for 14 years in and around East Africa. This early childhood instilled in me a love of wildlife and the outdoors. Most weekends were spent camping along the banks of my family's favourite river, or in some national park somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I have since travelled the world extensively, visiting over 50 countries along the way getting raw material for my art. I now live in South Australia.
I’m passionate about wildlife and this forms a large part of my portfolio, but I am also fascinated by the human face and take many portrait commissions.
I work in a variety of media but mainly soft pastels and scratchboard. I love detail and it’s often my wish to communicate the soul of the subject by paying special attention to the eyes and facial features. My goal with my art is to allow the viewer to feel something and for that to happen, I need to feel it first. It may be compassion, pain, love or some other emotion, but if I’ve created it, it made me feel something in the first place and I hope to convey this to the viewer.
Chimpanzee Exhibition
Wildlife artist Leigh Rust and myself have collaborated on an exhibition of chimp paintings to raise much needed funds for the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone, West Africa, The Jane Goodall Institute and also Monarto Zoo's (South Australia) new chimpanzee enclosure. We are exhibiting thirty plus paintings with profits going to these three great organisations. For more news on this, please check out this dedicated website, art for chimps or click the picture below
The photo shows me meeting Dr Jane Goodall as she opens our show. The serendipity of this was that she was so impressed with the show, she invited me to her lecture the following night at the Adelaide Town Hall. At the end of the lecture, and in front of a packed house, she asked her 'Roots and Shoots' program volunteers to join her onstage, then she asked Dr Carla Litchfield, the president of the Australasian Primate Society, and Dr Chris West, the Director of the Adelaide and Monarto Zoos and one time director of the London Zoo to join her ................ and then she asked me up on stage too. In front of hundreds of people she then proceeded to tell them that this small group of people on stage were actually doing something to benefit chimps and the world in general and used us as an example of what can be achieved. I was over the moon!!!
Copyright
All artwork on this site is copyright © by Patrick Hedges and may not be duplicated, copied, photocopied, linked to, reproduced, distributed, modified, reused, downloaded, transmitted, or used in any other way without the written permission of the artist.
