Sold     Patrick Hedges       Patrick Hedges was born in Uganda and raised in and around East Africa before leaving for England at the age of 14, and again to Australia in 1990. He has lived in Adelaide for the last 20 years. His early life saw him on safari most weekends building a love of African animals and his family kept a large assortment of strange animals as pets, from a zorilla (though not a skunk, it could be thought to be Africa’s equivalent), a duiker, owls and a heron all the way through to snakes, both venomous and harmless, and many frogs. He incorporates these animals into his art but also has a fashion for people which can be seen in his many portraits. Patrick works in a variety of media but mainly scratchboard and soft pastels. He loves detail and it’s his wish to communicate the soul of the subject by paying special attention to the eyes and facial features. His goal with his art is to allow the viewer to feel something and for that to happen, he needs to feel it first. It may be compassion, pain, love or some other emotion, but if he’s created it, it made him feel something in the first place and he hopes to convey this to the viewer.