NYAB Event - Gregory Hayes “Shooting Star”

Gregory Hayes “Shooting Star”

Nancy Margolis Gallery

This event has ended.

Though technology and digital media overshadow painting, I consider painting an organic and gestural process that offers infinite possibilities for imagery, statement, and perception. To me, painting – one of the most conventional of disciplines – is ultimately one of the most experimental, exhilarating, and enduring of all media.
In my work I explore how paint can be used through various tools and techniques to reinvent what it means to mix colors and present patterns through everything from mathematically inspired grids on canvas to organically placed works on paper. My objective is to heighten the viewer’s sensitivity to subtle variations and to reveal that pictorial complexity can be achieved through a restricted vocabulary.
In my Color Array series, I use a predetermined pattern based on the Archimedean spiral combined with the unpredictability of the interaction of my process and the materials used to produce systemic images that are fueled by accidental nuances within confined spaces. I lay down drips of paint on pre-drawn ¼ inch grids. This involves applying paint to the surface of the canvas and allowing it to form natural convex circles. The application process causes there to be multiple colors within each individual drip, and the proportions of the colors change gradually as the process continues. Visually, the drips coalesce to reveal a larger pattern. I try to control the amount of paint in each region equally, but ultimately the paint has a life of its own due to its physical properties and to gravity. I welcome these chance interventions.
Each painting in my Color Array series evokes a concern and fascination in itself, its complexities, its visual dynamics, its achievement of manipulation and technique, and the demonstration of artistic capacity. These paintings expand on my previous experimentation with brushless painting and geometric abstraction.