Whether told around a campfire or under the covers with a flashlight, ghost stories are an indestructible part of the story-telling tradition.
And they’re also a source of inspiration for Mark Hosford, an artist based out of Nashville, Tenn.
In his series Ghost Stories, Hosford has given visual context to stories whose subject matter cannot be scientifically or factually proven and whose existence depends on storytelling.
“Ghost stories have inherent timelines and events that need to be told in order to fully understand them,” said Hosford. “For instance, if a ghost haunts a hotel, there is probably a back story behind why that ghost haunts that place. Were they murdered there? Or did they commit some atrocity or were unfairly treated in this environment at one point? The back story is necessary to know why they are here in the present.
The Way of the Ouija by Mark Hosford
“For the Ghost Stories series, I elaborate on stories that were told to me, or ones I tried to experience, or ones that I had read about. In the drawings, I try to give a snapshot of all the elaborate possibilities centered around these events. I try to infuse the drawing with movement and an implied history of events. It can be difficult to tell a narrative tale in one static drawing, but I enjoy rendering a snapshot which has an implied span of time built in.”
Hosford says he’s had an “overactive imagination” since childhood, when he first started envisioning the world “as nothing more than dolls and creatures acting out fantastic narratives” and started having inescapable and graphic nightmares. Lucky for us, he woke up excited to relay them through neurotic doodles.
A professor of printmaking and drawing at Vanderbilt University, Hosford has a triptych series included in Tales They Told Us called The Bridge. Spend some time on the threshold of his magical worlds at LAL’s Loudoun House thru May 12.
This Saturday at 1pm, Tales They Told Us artist Alice Pixley Young will be giving an artist talk to discuss storytelling in art. The gallery will be open until 4 afterward, so come for the lecture and stay to peruse the work of Hosford and other artists in the exhibition.
