Nationally Recognized Artist Will Display Artwork At Bozarts
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Artist Randy Hayes was busy in the gallery Monday putting up exhibits for the exhibition, “Eccentric Branches.” The show opens Friday night.
WATER VALLEY – Nationally recognized Mississippi artist Randy Hayes will be showing his artwork at Bozarts Gallery. Opening night for the exhibition “Eccentric Branches” is Friday, March 1, from 6 to 9 p.m.
A native of Clinton, Miss., and graduate of the Memphis College of Art, Hayes is the past recipient of the Visual Arts Award given by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. At home in Holly Springs, he has been creating award-winning art for many decades and has been included in the major contemporary survey of American Landscapes edited by Ann J. Abadie and J. Richard Gruber.
“We are excited to host Randy Hayes at Bozarts Gallery. This is such an honor for us and the community,” says gallery owner Annette Trefzer. “Randy has had major museum exhibitions all over the country.”
This includes solo museum exhibitions at the Seattle Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Boise Art Museum, Mississippi Museum of Art, the Cheekwood Museum in Nashville, and other museums. His art has been included in exhibitions from Oxford to Los Angeles, and from New York to Chicago.
What makes his work distinct is that Hayes paints on photographs rather than on a blank canvas. He had long painted from photographs but had not incorporated them into his work until one day in 1990 when he accidentally got paint on a contact sheet, which is a proof print containing all the frames of a developed roll of film.
“I began to think of the proof sheet as a narrative, as a story,” Hayes said. That led him to arrange photographs in a sequence and paint over them to tell a story. “The work is a palimpsest,” says Trefzer, “which is a fancy word for a layered text.” In Randy’s art the photographs function as a subtext and the painting on top of them as a theme. This technique has become his signature work for which he is celebrated and nationally recognized.
Work on display from the series “Eccentric Branches” began during the pandemic in 2020 when Hayes began to study the shapes and forms of Magnolia tree branches in his backyard. Hayes recalls: “The limbs would arc and turn and twist and finally produce a bud at the end of the branch. I found the branches as beautiful as the buds with the colorful lichen attached.”
The exhibition at Bozarts also features additional work including a new painting inspired by branches from Faulkner’s Rowan Oak garden. The exhibition is on view until May 31 at 403 North Main Street. Gallery hours are Friday, noon to 5 p.m. and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.. The gallery is also open by appointment, call (662) 229-7602 or by Instagram @bozartsgallery. The show is free and open to the public.
