On stage with HUX
Hidden beneath a Pizza Express in Holborn is a jazz club, hosting all sorts of music acts in a speakeasy-style set-up. This was the venue for my latest live drawing gig, with a spectacularly talented musician called HUX.
I got to know HUX in my local Oxford coffee shop. We bonded over a shared enthusiasm for art and music, and an aversion to writing about ourselves in the third person (especially for artist bios). When he said he would be playing a London show with full band, I knew this was a gig I wanted to catch on paper.
I had an area out of the spotlight at the side of the stage, and given all the electrical equipment I kept to dry materials (who wants to be the idiot causing a powercut in the middle of a live show?). As it turned out, the thin lines of pen and pencil resonated with the instruments playing in front of me – the strings of the guitars, the vibrating chords of the piano.
Different compositions emerged for each song – the arc of a chorus encircling the tripping notes of a verse; a looping line that follows a repeated melody; the volume of air in a syncopated pause. Back at the studio the next day, I continued sketching these shapes and loops. Questions play in my head while I’m repeating and reworking them. My decisions about line and colour on the stage were instinctive - so where do those associations come from? How does each sketch relate to that immersion in sound? In a strange way, each picture contains some of the music, and can transport me back to that time and place… is that some kind of paper-based time-travel?!
