JODI HAYS All of my work can be seen as landscape (a framing of place), perhaps related to having grown up in rural Arkansas. My core iconography rests on the grid and all its history in painting and associative connections with architecture and perspective--windows, fences, gates and walls. Painting holds potential--for note taking and a way of organizing knowledge; landscape, abstraction, figuration, among others. These systems (grids) become a scaffold for pictorial inclinations. Stripes generate a placement in pattern, repetition and seriality. Textiles, associated with warmth, the body, pattern, domesticity and weave inform this work, as do fragmentary shapes that are plant-like or jaggedly organic, bringing what is thought of as “outside” into the studio, as in still life. Hard-edged shapes exist with more rounded/ floral moves. The way I see my paintings is like how a folded map relates to a pocket, holding another potential as locative device, to consider consequences and ask questions, including and beyond selfreflexivity. The work is always generated from a daily relationship to drawing, painting and reading.
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Entry gouache and watercolor on fabriano paper 86” x 144” | 2018 (right image)