Haley Hayden

Studio Visit

Artist Statement

My paintings transform domestic interiors and studio spaces into psychological landscapes where everyday objects become repositories for memory, humor,obsession, and emotional experience. I am interested in the mythology of being anartist: the struggle, boredom, exhilaration, and constant oscillation between feelingprofound and feeling ridiculous. Rooted in personal experience, art-historical reference,and poetic metaphor, my work draws from the familiar objects and spaces of daily life,allowing them to accumulate meaning through repetition rather than fixed symbolism.

The studio functions not only as a setting but as a protagonist. It is a place ofpossibility and frustration, where physical labor, routine, and moments of revelation exist alongside isolation, comfort, and absurdity. Rather than depicting myself directly, Iconstruct indirect self-portraits through the environments I inhabit. Recurring objectsmigrate from painting to painting, accumulating meaning until they form a personal visual language. Dogs, quilts, skulls, snacks, windows, and other familiar motifs movefluidly between the sacred and the mundane, sincerity and satire, comfort and mortality.

My process is intuitive. Beginning with observation, memory, or a single object that captures my attention, I draw with paint, allowing each composition to developthrough revision and association. Perspective shifts, scale becomes unstable, and spaces are reconstructed rather than recorded. By placing art-historical referencesalongside ordinary, culturally unserious objects, I collapse distinctions between the monumental and the everyday. Ultimately, I am interested in how familiar spacesbecome charged with psychological and emotional significance, and how the repetitive rituals of making art transform the ordinary into something strange, intimate, and deeply human.

-- Haley Hayden

Haley Hayden (b. 1999) is an acrylic painter based in Brooklyn, New York. Shereceived her BFA in Fine Arts from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2022, whereshe also studied Art History and Mathematics. Her work has been exhibited throughoutNew York City and Brooklyn, as well as in Florence, Italy, including exhibitions at theMuseum at FIT, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, 108 Collective, and Corner Gallery.