Hayes Greenwood is a London-based artist working primarily in portray, alongside sculpture, video and set up. Her deeply charged works draw on lived expertise, utilizing panorama and pure motifs to discover life, demise, want and embodiment. She combines the acquainted and the otherworldly, translating complicated emotional states into heightened visible kinds the place inner and exterior fold into each other. Hayes Greenwood combines the acquainted and the otherworldly, translating complicated emotional states into heightened visible kinds the place the inner and exterior worlds collapse and fold into each other.
Hayes Greenwood has exhibited internationally, together with solo exhibits at Castor (London) and GiG (Munich), in addition to group exhibitions at Stuart Shave Fashionable Artwork (London), Mana Modern (USA) and Saatchi Gallery (London). She is at present engaged on a significant fee for Hospital Rooms and has not too long ago undertaken residencies with theCOLAB: Physique & Place (2025), Hogchester Arts (2024), and was awarded the Palazzo Monti x ACS Residency Prize (2024). She holds an MA from Metropolis & Guilds of London Artwork College and is the co-founder and former director of Block 336. Her work is held in lots of private and non-private collections.
Was there a selected second if you understood that creating artwork wasn’t simply one thing you liked, however one thing you needed to dedicate your life to?
It didn’t arrive as a singular second; it was a slower course of than that for me. I’ve all the time been surrounded by artwork and creativity in tradition each excessive and low. Making is one thing I’ve all the time beloved and simply by no means been in a position to cease doing.
Although she didn’t do it later in life, my mum was a talented painter, and my stepdad had a deep love of artwork and literature. He was very concerned in Salts Mill in Yorkshire after I was rising up. He was a pal of David Hockney’s, and I all the time beloved Hockney’s drawings and opera units after I was a toddler. As a child, being an artist appeared like a really enjoyable and compelling approach of partaking with the world!
I adopted a reasonably commonplace path: artwork A-level, an artwork basis, then a BA and MA. After finishing my BA, I arrange Block 336 in Brixton, a big artist-run gallery and studio area which I ran for over a decade, commissioning main solo initiatives by different artists with an formidable public programme. I’ve taught in artwork faculties for the previous 15 years and these experiences reinforce that artwork isn’t nearly particular person observe however about connection, change and deep studying.
I feel artwork will all the time be a method to orient myself on the earth. It continues to be a supply of enjoyment, a spot to time-travel, play, suppose and course of moments which can be complicated, painful, unresolved, intense, joyful, fantastic or unusual.
You point out that the work you created for Bizarre Climate have all ‘increase[ed] out of a type of grief logic.’ How did creating this physique of labor problem or affirm your earlier beliefs in regards to the relationship between artwork and grief?
Properly, artists have all the time made work to grasp their emotions and place on the earth. There’s a number of grief in artwork in a single kind or one other. Edvard Munch is commonly quoted as saying that “artwork comes from pleasure and ache, however largely ache.” It’s stated that grief is the worth we pay for love, and Bell Hooks writes about this. She talks about it not being merely about loss, however about how it’s a testomony to the depth of our bonds. She describes it as proof of our capability to like deeply and stay open and affected by the world slightly than defended towards it.
In making Bizarre Climate, this angle grew to become tangible by means of the way in which the work responded to put and reminiscence. The work grew out experiences formed by transition and alter, but additionally by attachment and connection and to the sense of poignancy and sharp reduction that accompanies vital life occasions. Working urgently and intuitively allowed the work to increase, embracing each depth and tenderness. Grief shouldn’t be one-dimensional; it isn’t singularly heavy or painful. It’s prismatic, generative, wild, psychedelic and transcendental. It could possibly expose what it’s to be alive and current on the earth and locates you in a heightened state of consciousness and openness.
Studying your description of grief as a prismatic state – the place love, ache, gratitude and acceptance can coexist – jogged my memory of a beloved quote by Rilke: “Dying is our pal exactly as a result of it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that’s right here, that’s pure, that’s love.”
Once you have been engaged on Bizarre Climate, did portray turn out to be a approach of getting into that heightened presence? Or did it perform extra as an area to carry contradiction, the place opposing emotional states might sit while not having decision?
That may be a stunning quote. I’d say each, and extra. Love and loss actually throw you round; they produce a type of Shakespearean insanity, and portray, for me, grew to become a container for all of it – a method to be in a state of heightened presence, to carry feelings that splinter and overlap while not having them to be resolved or so as. On the similar time, it was a method to join with love and wonder, to really feel deeply, to course of and be grounded, to remodel one thing painful into one thing inventive, to channel, to sublimate, and to experiment and play.
There’s a persistent concept that among the most stunning or resonant artwork is born from life’s most painful experiences, particularly profound loss. Do you discover that notion reductive, or does it ring true in your personal expertise?
It may be true. Ache opens you as much as depth, depth and transformation. Equally although, pleasure, curiosity and marvel are very fertile floor, and so they feed and exist in artwork in methods which can be very profound. These items sit on two sides of the identical coin and sometimes can’t be separated. For me, creating Bizarre Climate was motivated by a major loss, sure, but it surely was additionally formed by a connection to like and a lot of what I feel is gorgeous. After I’m making work, I’m ceaselessly making an attempt to have interaction with that which I don’t absolutely perceive – the deep, gritty, bizarre and stunning components of expertise. For me, making is finally about embracing all of it and letting it information the work.
Have been there any works in Bizarre Climate that genuinely shocked you, the place you began with one emotional or visible intention however the portray took you someplace utterly completely different?
The work all begin with drawings, however earlier than committing to creating the work I allowed the drawing stage to be very open – a lot of them took me in surprising instructions. The logic of the works was formed partially by my connection to panorama and residential. The work reference the hills of the Pennines the place I grew up. Slightly than depicting the landscapes actually, I allowed inner and exterior states to fold into each other, making an attempt to push bodily sensation by means of climate and geography.
The bigger work are a good scale, so bodily they have been fairly immersive. There’s all the time a dialogue between intention and discovery within the making that retains the work alive and unpredictable, pushing color and contact to hold feeling and sensation. I’d attempt issues throughout the work and go off in mad instructions, usually returning to one thing nearer to what I initially supposed. However it’s important to discover and take these flights of fancy to see what comes of it – and the historical past and remnants of these journeys stay.
Considering again to The Witch’s Backyard, which engaged deeply with marginalisation, people data and gendered authority, I’m curious how earlier our bodies of labor proceed to dwell inside newer ones. Do processes or emotional methods ever bleed ahead, or does every sequence demand an entire reorientation?
The core is all the time the identical and earlier our bodies of labor undoubtedly dwell inside newer ones, even when the floor issues may really feel completely different.
The Witch’s Backyard was equally motivated by an autobiographical place to begin, monitoring my expertise of making an attempt for and later having youngsters. It was by means of researching the origins of the love coronary heart image that I got here throughout the historical past (doubtless pretend information) a few now-extinct plant referred to as silphium, which was apparently an aphrodisiac and contraceptive and was stated to have a heart-shaped seed. That set me off into researching vegetation and their histories, that are after all inextricably entangled with our personal. Contextually, the analysis was so wealthy and engaging that I couldn’t cease making the work – there are about 60 works within the sequence. These vegetation and flowers I used to be portray grew to become containers for emotion, story and historical past, however I additionally all the time noticed them anthropomorphically – as characters in their very own proper. For Bizarre Climate that gaze has shifted outward towards panorama – there was a type of zooming out.
I’ve all the time linked to William Blake’s description of double imaginative and prescient – seeing the world as greater than it seems, one factor wanting like one other, or seeming to specific one thing emotionally. Pareidolia is a well-known phenomenon and my youngsters are all the time pointing issues out, saying, “that appears like X.” It’s fairly a trippy or childlike approach of seeing the world that has all the time been with me. I feel it’s a helpful, generative factor to pay attention to and what’s taking place inwardly and outwardly usually mirror and inform one’s understanding of expertise.
Lastly, what’s one thing you want extra individuals understood in regards to the expertise of being an artist?
Properly, I used to be proper as a child – being an artist is a really enjoyable and compelling method to have interaction with the world! It’s the most effective factor in so some ways, however as somebody who lives in a semi-permanent state of existential consciousness, it will also be intense *laughs*! Artwork takes you to the craziest locations and introduces you to superb individuals however there is no such thing as a street map and the trail could be tough to navigate. Artists are consistently balancing inventive exploration with sensible realities and proper now, with a troublesome financial system and humanities funding changing into ever more durable to entry, it may be difficult. Being an artist shouldn’t be all the time straightforward, however I wouldn’t wish to do anything.
