Artist Features

Stephen Hayes

Hayes, Stephen. Roseburg, OR, 2016. 2018 Individual Artist Fellow, Oregon Arts Commission.

Originally published February, 2018

Stephen Hayes’ ongoing series “In the Hour Before” presents sites of recent public tragedies that have altered how we view our world. Using Google Maps to chart the space just before the event, Hayes’ paintings, with impressionistic coloring and gesture, carry opposing intimacy and distance. Says the artist: “A painting can pay poetic homage to the lives and places at the heart of each story. In fact, we are ALL at the heart of each of these stories. I believe that real solutions to this will only come from contemplation, reflection, deliberation and conscious action.” Hayes’ recent solo exhibitions include New Paintings at David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; In the Hour Before at Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland and Figure/Ground Stephen Hayes: A Thirty-Year Retrospective at Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art, Lewis and Clark College, Portland. His work has also been shown in group exhibitions including Converge 45 YOU IN MIND curated by Kristy Edmunds, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live (touring, Pendleton Center for the Arts, Pendleton, OR; Shepard Contemporary, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, among others) and More Than a Pretty Face: 150 Years of the Portrait Print at the Portland Art Museum. Hayes received a Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts in 2011, and is represented by Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland.

Courtesy of the Oregon Arts Commission.

Artist Credit: Stephen Hayes