The Sturgeon and the Artist

This artwork featured in the Hereford Sculpture Trail (2024). 

“The artwork depicts an artist grappling to reach a mythically large sturgeon fish. The fish references the giant sturgeon in the Herefordshire Museums collection, captured in 1846 in the river Wye and displayed close to the site of the artwork (a music shop on High Street, The Black Swan pub and a fishmongers on Widemarsh Street). 

Art often reaches for the unreachable, the elusive, an attempt to articulate the unarticulated. The 1846 capture was a symbol of the mysteries of nature, this sturgeon speaks to the mysteries of the creative process, forever evading capture.” – Nicholas Stephenson

*Historical information from Herefordshire Museums

The Sturgeon and the Artist was commissioned by Hereford College of Arts in 2024 as part of a collaborative project between Hereford College of Arts, Meadow Arts and Herefordshire Council. It is one part of the Art + People + Place programme, commissioned in partnership with Studio Response as part of the £6 million Hereford City Centre Improvements (HCCI) project.

Location: 1 High Town, Hereford HR1 2AA

Image: Nicholas Stephenson, The Sturgeon and the Artist, installation view, Hereford Sculpture Trail, Hereford, 2024. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. 

 

About the artist

Nicholas Stephenson

Nicholas Stevenson is an award-winning Graphic Artist, Illustrator and Animator living in Hereford. He studied illustration at Hereford College of Arts and now lectures on the BA(hons) Illustration and BA(hons) Illustration & Animation courses. Nicholas has worked with clients such as Google, Dell, Intel and enjoys exploring ideas of silliness, magic, joy, shadow, folk, history, nature and mystery. When Nicholas was a child he lived briefly in Seychelles. The view from his bedroom window seemed filled with oddly glowing plants in the moonlight, the feeling of which is the sturgeon Nicholas has chased in his artwork.