Press Release - "Please Hold" by Rachel Hayden
Rachel Hayden
"Why Am I Crying?"
Acrylic and flashe on canvas
16 x 20 Inches.
2019.
First Amendment Gallery
Please Hold
Rachel Hayden
Opening Reception - March 2nd, 12-10pm
Through - March 29, 2019
info@firstamendmentgallery.com
First Amendment Gallery is proud to present Please Hold, a solo exhibition by Baltimore-based painter Rachel Hayden. This new body of work is inspired by universal emotions and symbols, including the hands and the sensation of touch, the moon, rain, sweat, and tears. Hayden communicates in clear and concise imagery to evoke an empathetic understanding of each thematic inclusion, a nod to her employment as an early childhood educator at an art museum. Please Hold opens Saturday March 2nd 12-10pm and will be on view through Friday, March 29th at First Amendment Gallery located at 1000 Howard St. in Downtown San Francisco. Gallery hours are Wednesday to Saturday, 11-6pm. To receive a preview of Please Hold contact info@firstamendmentgallery.com.
Hayden describes her practice as such: “In painting, I’m seeking logic and control in the mess of life. I’m searching for a concise visual description of a floaty feeling, or a falling feeling. I’m making a collection of small acrylic paintings using recurring images: gentle hands, drops of sweat and tears, and the sun and moon. These images are ubiquitous, but in my work I like to think of them as my own set of icons. Over time, I am developing a personal language, using these repeat images as characters in my alphabet.
When beginning a new painting, I like to approach a difficult or ambiguous feeling with childlike simplicity. Using pure, bright colors and simple shapes I create an ensemble cast of subjects: myself, the sun, the moon, hands, teardrops, raindrops and sweat drops. When choosing images to paint, I look for the constants — things that will always be part of my life, but whose significance may change when placed in different scenarios. By adopting these images into my alphabet, I feel a new love and ownership of them and they become my prized possessions. They are game pieces I can move around on a board, knick-knacks I can organize on a shelf, or magnets arranged on a refrigerator door. A handful of bits and pieces shuffled around can create different stories, and as my alphabet of images grows and changes the stories I tell slowly shift. In painting, I have power to playfully manipulate forces greater than myself, and find control over my own visual narrative.”
Rachel Hayden
"Drop Shadow"
Acrylic on canvas.
20 x 16 Inches.
2019.
Bio
Rachel Hayden is a Baltimore-based artist from Cincinnati, Ohio. She graduated from MICA in 2015 with a BFA in Fine Arts and now works at The Walters Art Museum, creating programming and teaching classes for newborns through five-year-olds. In her paintings you will find moody moons, tender hands, and falling teardrops. Her work deals with sensations both physical and emotional, as well as phenomena of time and space.
Rachel Hayden
"Cloudburst"
Acrylic and flashe on canvas.
18 x 24 Inches.
2018.