… “Her loose intuitive approach has grown from following a circuitous artistic path. Hays fell in love with art while at Barnard College—”I didn’t hold a paintbrush until I was in college,” she says—and pursued the practice full-time after graduating, before pivoting into a successful graphic design career, and then again into school administration. (She is a founding partner of New York’s Blue School, a model of progressive education.) “One day I just felt ready to make art again,” explains Hays.
What surfaced was a clear, visual language rooted in abstraction. Color and shape, both natural and manufactured, dominate her work, and the juxtaposition between them is an endless source of fascination for her. “I like putting synthetic, trippy color moments and sharper man-made forms, like a neon orange traffic ccone, in the middle of stuff that feels more organic, and seeing how they inhabit the same space,” Hays elaborates. “That sort of interruption thrills me.” (by Fiorella Valdesolo)