Haroun Hayward
Tainted Love (Study for Blasted Tree) No. 2, 2022
Oil paint, oil stick, oil pastel, and gesso on panel
Framed: 93.2 x 63.5 x 4.8 cm
36 3/4 x 25 x 1 7/8 in
36 3/4 x 25 x 1 7/8 in
Haroun Hayward (b. 1983, London) received a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting from University of Brighton in 2006 and an MA in Fine Art Practice from Goldsmiths University, London...
Haroun Hayward (b. 1983, London) received a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting from University of Brighton in 2006 and an MA in Fine Art Practice from Goldsmiths University, London in 2010. He lives and works in London.
Hayward's paintings are a celebration of hybridity, harmoniously converging art historical and musical references with distinct modes of making. The paintings honor what informs Hayward's personal and artistic narrative - rave culture, abstract expressionism, post war British landscape painting and his mother's textile collection. Growing up in North London in the 1990s, his formative years were spent skateboarding, listening to music with his older sibling and catching the tail end of the English rave scene.
In Tainted Love (Study for Blasted Tree) No. 2 (2022), Hayward works in oil, oil stick and pastel, developing a distinctive set of processes for handling each section. Methodical in the making, Hayward starts with a gessoed wooden panel, painting the top half first. He applies a light layer of oil paint, smoothing over with a neutral tone before scratching with a sharp tool, revealing the colour below. He then intuitively punctuates areas with oil pastel. There is in an immediacy and freedom of expression in the abstract section, which Hayward describes as coming from the 'ether' - music made into visual form. The combination of shapes reference the interconnectedness of repetition in music and specifically Soft Cell’s 1981 song Tainted Love.
The bottom left part of the painting has two rectangles with cut out chevrons, the unusual fragment nods to the avant-garde movement of vorticism. In this area of painterly flourish, Hayward reimagines works by post war British painters. In his own versions of quintessential British landscapes, the small scale and great level of detail speaks to his training in Indo-Persian miniature painting. In this work he has used a Graham Sutherland work Study for Blasted Tree as the source inspiration.
Emulating embroidery, the bottom right section is a textural patterning, informed by a Cameroonian textile. Hayward has altered the pattern as a nod to the Global Hypercolour logo — a 1990s t-shirt brand popular in rave culture. Sculptural relief and intensity of colour is achieved by a painstaking process of remolding an oil stick in order to apply the medium with a knife, creating ridged lines. Incredibly evocative of threads, the oil stick can be mistaken for fabric.
Hayward's paintings are a celebration of hybridity, harmoniously converging art historical and musical references with distinct modes of making. The paintings honor what informs Hayward's personal and artistic narrative - rave culture, abstract expressionism, post war British landscape painting and his mother's textile collection. Growing up in North London in the 1990s, his formative years were spent skateboarding, listening to music with his older sibling and catching the tail end of the English rave scene.
In Tainted Love (Study for Blasted Tree) No. 2 (2022), Hayward works in oil, oil stick and pastel, developing a distinctive set of processes for handling each section. Methodical in the making, Hayward starts with a gessoed wooden panel, painting the top half first. He applies a light layer of oil paint, smoothing over with a neutral tone before scratching with a sharp tool, revealing the colour below. He then intuitively punctuates areas with oil pastel. There is in an immediacy and freedom of expression in the abstract section, which Hayward describes as coming from the 'ether' - music made into visual form. The combination of shapes reference the interconnectedness of repetition in music and specifically Soft Cell’s 1981 song Tainted Love.
The bottom left part of the painting has two rectangles with cut out chevrons, the unusual fragment nods to the avant-garde movement of vorticism. In this area of painterly flourish, Hayward reimagines works by post war British painters. In his own versions of quintessential British landscapes, the small scale and great level of detail speaks to his training in Indo-Persian miniature painting. In this work he has used a Graham Sutherland work Study for Blasted Tree as the source inspiration.
Emulating embroidery, the bottom right section is a textural patterning, informed by a Cameroonian textile. Hayward has altered the pattern as a nod to the Global Hypercolour logo — a 1990s t-shirt brand popular in rave culture. Sculptural relief and intensity of colour is achieved by a painstaking process of remolding an oil stick in order to apply the medium with a knife, creating ridged lines. Incredibly evocative of threads, the oil stick can be mistaken for fabric.