Watching, Waiting

In the 1953 absurdist play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, two characters – Vladimir and Estragon – wait in vain for the arrival of someone named Godot. It seems that both men are undergoing an existential crisis. Most theorists suggest this suspended state relates to questions of death, the place of God and the meaning of human existence.

The act of painting is also about waiting and often it’s about seeking answers to questions about living and making sense of the world. Painting, putting paint to canvas, is also an act of exploration, of uncertainty and self-realisation. The painter is a proverbial watcher, an enacted self who steps back and captures moments that others might miss or dismiss. Stephen Hobson’s rabbit and hat paintings conjure and play in imaginary existential landscapes. Here the artist uses whimsy, surprise, humour and pathos, together with painterly affect, to introduce the viewer to fictitious characters and places. But the ‘rabbit out of a hat’ familiarity belies their true intent. While complete in themselves, the figures in these landscapes are captured on the way to somewhere else; perhaps they connect to the artist’s past or project a sense of the future? Certainly the metaphors within the pictures speak of many things, including wonderment, dread and fear. They hold us still, while at the same time connecting us with, and moving us beyond, watching and waiting.

Maybe we are all waiting and watching for something, but with a nod to Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon (who are still waiting), Stephen Hobson’s work shows us a way forward, not to the existential impotence of Godot, but to other ‘images’ of what it is to be human that includes pathos, sacrifice and searching.

Dr Craig Douglas - Watching, Waiting
(Catalogue essay. Watching, Waiting exhibition. Bosz Gallery, Brisbane, 2015).

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These paintings were made in 2014 and 2015 – one hundred years after the commencement of World War One. It seemed impossible at the time not to reflect on that folly and its tragic repercussions.

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