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John Hesketh: The Presence of Absence by Aline SmithsonDecember 15, 2024

S13m091Session 13, Moment #91, Description: Ballon Bubbles, 31.5"x 42", $2000

©John Hesketh, Session 13, Moment #91, Description: Ballon Bubbles, 31.5″x 42″

How do we process grief? How do we visually acknowledge the pain and emptiness of loss? Artist John Hesketh has created a series of light impressions, made on the stucco side of the home that he shared with his wife, in response to her passing. He has taken a process that is ephemeral and gestural and made it into a language that speaks to love, light, and loss.

Hesketh recently opened the exhibition, The Presence of Absence at the Point of View Gallery in the Santora Building. 207 N Broadway,Suite I, Santa Ana, CA 92705. The exhibition will run through Dec 31st by appointment only. To contact the artist for viewing: johnheskethstudio@gmail or Instagram @jchesketh

The Presence of Absence is a photographic exhibition exploring loss and the grieving process. Beginning in 2012, Hesketh revisited the same subject: a stucco wall of a Cinderella house in Anaheim, California, which he shared with his wife and artistic partner, Peggy Hesketh. Using a small flashlight taped to the end of a long stick, he scraped marks of light and fields of his energy across the wall, resulting in complex abstractions. The extended moments offered by long exposures capture the interplay of performance and remanence. In 2018, Peggy passed away. Before moving away from the house, John returned to the wall to create more photographs to complete their unfinished conversations.

The exhibition traces a grieving artist’s timeline and how altering and learning from his processes became expressions of the different layers of emotion. “My original conceit was to photograph black and white records for color to be blended later as a nod to an early form of creating color prints called dye-transfer printing,” says Hesketh, “Some of the black and white images stood out brilliantly on their own and refused to be blended with color. After Peggy’s passing, these black and white images expressed my deepest grief in the wake of her absence.”

As time passed, the vibrancy of color returned to his work, emerging from the flowers in his new garden. “The color became my release,” John shares. “My grief was now filled with forgiveness and acceptance, grateful for her presence in my life.”

The Presence of Absence honors the non-linear, cyclical nature of our experience of loss by exhibiting both black-and-white and color works together. The exhibition encourages a discussion of grief, loneliness, healing through art, and long-exposure photography, fostering deeper conversations about these experiences.

The Presence of Absence

She was editing her first novel while taking chemo. Our personal lives had become very small between the brain fog and the rewrites. She inspired me to explore as many worlds of color as I could find in a single stucco wall of the house. Our conversations, as artists, shifted between the success of her book and exploring my images that would not blend with color.

After her passing, I returned to the wall to finish our conversation. The images we had talked about became my passage of grief. A meditation on the presence of her absence. The project spoke without color, far from its original intent. These black and white images coalesced into a language of light to find my way back.

With time, the colors returned to define my release, bringing the project full cycle to its original conceit. Transformed by forgiveness and acceptance, luminous layers now blend with fresh colors sampled photographically from my new garden. Now with a palette of sweet peas, iris, dahlias, and English rose, I can embrace her absence, grateful for her presence that lingers within my life.

S03m34, Session03_Moment34_Detail, Description: Nautalus, Spiral, 12"x 12", $550

©John Hesketh, Session03_Moment34_Detail, Description: Nautalus, Spiral, 12″x 12″

John Hesketh (b.1955) is an artist based in Laguna Niguel, California. Interested in the photograph’s ability to interpret performance and its remanence during the extended moment of long exposure or multiple exposures. John often works in front of the camera to perform with light source in hand, to explore his relationship to family, community and our rituals of belonging.

The seeds of John’s photographic knowledge were planted in his family’s studio, started by his mother and father the day he was born. More recently his life includes 30 years of teaching photography, working with other artists to print their photographic editions, while creating and maintaining his own long term art projects.

His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. His art is found in many public and private collections including Principal Financial (Des Moines, IA), the California Museum of Photography at UC Riverside, Maison Europeenne de la Photographie (Ville de Paris), and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

Instagram @jchesketh