Derrick Hodgson

February 1st, 2007

We contacted Derrick Hodgson (www.madreal.com) before we even opened Subaquatica 4 years ago. He didn’t respond to the requisites of having a clear Graffiti background and he wasn’t (as far as we knew) doing art on the streets, which was our primary focus trying to define what Subaquatica was about. We simply liked his work and wanted to have some of his prints and stickers here. Many things have changed since back then in 2003 but we are still fans of Derrick’s work and wanted to share this little interview and a few pics, as a sample of his work, with all of you.

It seems you have somehow been categorized as a street artist or at least has been included in a same “circuit” and “scene” with a generation of young artists where many of them come from art in the streets with stickers, posters, stencils… Do you feel part of that whole Street art scene? I do know you have done some stickering and postering. When, where, how and why you started to do work on the streets?

I don’t really consider myself an “urban “ artist or “street” artist. I really don’t like those labels. I live in Canada’s largest city, so my habitat at the moment is urban. All artists interact with the environment in which they live. I‘ve been grouped in with this new generation or scene because my work shares some aesthetic sensibilities to work seen on the street, namely the quick bold line of tags… The when, where, how and why: to pay for schooling in Toronto I planted trees in the mountains of South Eastern, British Columbia. After school I returned to those mountains to live and play. I stayed for three years and enjoyed the mellow mountain folk lifestyle but really wasn’t doing a lot with my art except filling sketch books and doing some graphic work for a local board shop and community newspaper. My older brother and his family lived in Vancouver so I went and stayed with them for a couple of months. During this time I did some recon of the “art scene” in Vancouver and with the help of my good friend Kyle McIntosh and Popgun Media developed a website to showcase my scribbles, scratches and scritches. The summer of 1999 I moved back to Toronto. It was at this time I started doing little nocturnal missions, not many folks were doing strictly character based work out and about. LICS and ASS EGG were really the only “heads” in Toronto strictly dropping characters. I started putting up stickers, postering and doing a little tagging simply as a way to connect with other artists. It was all mellow. I’d go out in the summer and but a sticker up behind a bunch of grass were no one could see it until the winter snow covered all and the little beast became visible. In many ways the work is about building my own iconography. I pulled a Johnny Appleseed and sowed my little visual seeds out in the big ole’ space, curious to see how’d they’d grow.

Growing in a non-urban environment and later moving to a city, how “urban” do you feel your art is?

My work is a reaction to the urban space I inhabit. It is a mash of rural and urban influences. Living/working in the city has helped get the work out to a larger audience… more sets of eyes in the big smokers.

Also talking again about having your own style but being part at the same time of a scene, it seems that you share with a lot of artists this new interest in characters as the main subject. The Pictoplasma initiative (book, website, the conference…) has been a catalyzer for all those artists and you have participated in both the books and the conference. Can you tell me how was your experience and how do you feel about the whole “character art” thing (if there is in fact such a thing)?

Peter Thaler contacted me in 1999 and asked if I’d submit some images for an online project he had started called Pictoplasma. Pictoplasma is a large database of contemporary character designs. Three books have been published showcasing the work and two conferences have happened in Berlin. My experience with the Pictoplasma organization has been great. The conferences were good fun… happy to have been apart of those events… wild times. Berlin is an exciting city: Tasty beer. There seems to be more interest these days in character design but I don’t think it has become a “thing”. Pictoplasma has helped shine a little light on an aspect of contemporary design that may not have been getting the attention it deserves.

About your characters, it’s obvious that there are some of them that you use repeatedly in your work but I was surprised to read in an interview with you that they had names!! Do they have a life of their own?

I control the mania stew. Each character has a purpose, a story to tell. It’s all very simple: jumpers jump around, Peepers make peeping sounds, floaters float, sprouts grow, howlers howl… they are all visual icons that help me describe the world as I see it.

And where do these characters live? In a parallel universe or in this same one?

They live in a parallel universe that is a simplified version of our own.

I noticed that there’s a character whose name you use as a nickname of your own: Mogo. Is it your alter ego in your character universe?

No, Mogo is not an alter ego. Mogo is the name of a species of my characters. It is a fun and silly word to say.

You’ve been travelling more and more lately for art shows and events. How do they like traveling? How traveling and visiting other places and meeting other artists has affected your art?

I consider myself very fortunate to able to travel with my art. Traveling is addictive. Experiencing new places and cultures always adds creative juices to the mega stew.

I can’t really tell by your art if your vision of life is a pessimistic or an optimistic one or simply none of the above and you are a “depends” person. For instance, the shapes, expressions, etc… of your character is rather bizarre and somehow disturbing but them you use really soft and somehow soothing colors. Where is the balance in your art between those opposites?

I’m both a pessimist and an optimist all in a depends kinda way. The world is a mad place, crazed but so beautiful… My art is a reflection of how I see the world. On one hand bizarre and disturbing and on the other hand so full of color and beauty. I don’t know if I really have found a balance between the opposites. The color in my work acts as a mask to make the images easy to visually digest. The “soothing” color invites the viewer into what is usually a very chaotic mash of line, shape and mania.

I would like you to let us know about the importance you put in the process of creating. Maybe it’s more complex than it appears or maybe not, maybe you focus more on the final result and use different processes as long as they take you there… can you elaborate on this, please?
I am a lousy painter but I love using paint. I consider myself more a drawer than a painter. I developed a process based on my background in printing that has let me keep the graphic nature of my drawn line but use paint to reproduce that line. My process has developed over time but has always started with filling sketch books with scratch after scritch after scribble. I take the sketches and scan them into the Apple, format them with a line and fill in different sizes, I output them onto acetate, then I burn a screen so that I can screen-print with them, I run acrylic paint through the screen… I have to work fast so that it doesn’t dry in the mesh. I use the same screens over and over again. I don’t wash out the emulsion I use the screen until it is completely useless. Using screen-printing in this way has lead to new discoveries, for example because I run acrylic paint through the mesh, overtime the mesh starts to fill with bits of paint. This in turn causes the lines to breakdown natural giving it a look that could not be achieved by drawing or painting only by this process of pushing paint through mesh. My studio is full of screens. When I’m putting together a painting I go to my “databank” of character screens and just pick out which ones I need for the composition and start building up the work one character at a time. It is a time consuming process but I usually enjoy the end results.

Maybe because you art is full of characters it would make sense to assume that your main influences come from comic books and cartoons. Is this so? If so, which ones you would say reflect the most on your art? Also, maybe you are influenced by other art forms such as music, movies or other more orthodox art forms (painting, etc…). Can you name maybe one influence in each one of those disciplines that you think have affected your art…? First thing that comes to your head.

As far as being influenced by cartoons and comic books I’d say the two greatest influences on me from those genres is the work of Sergio Aragones, he did the little drawings found in the margins of MAD magazine. They were called “marginals”. And the work of Rick Griffin. He became well known for his work on sixties rock posters for bands like the Grateful Dead. He also did a lot of work for Surfer magazine. Music influence would be Lee Scratch Perry. Movie influence would be “Star Wars” or “Apocalypse Now” or “Microcosmos”. Orthodox art forms would be Andy Goldsworthy, Keith Haring, Takashi Murakami and Goya.

Any new projects coming up that you might what to share with us?

New projects… currently working on some board graphics for a small company called Logic Snowboard based in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. Those will come out in 07/08 season. Also doing a small custom surfboard project with Vancouver/Ventura based surfer/shaper G.Morden designs. I also have a new line of handmade wooden toys slowly trickle’n out of the studio. They can be found at Magic Pony here in Toronto.

Something you want to do that it hasn’t been proposed to you yet?

I what like to start doing some large-scale installation work. I also really want to push to wood toy thing. I’d like to do a year long artist residency in the North West Territories working and learning from the Inuit artists. I am really drawn to and influenced by the graphic work of the Inuit. Very beautiful imagery coming outta the Canadian north country.

Entry Filed under: Artists