jo hay

"United States", 2008

100"x64"
oil on fifty canvas panels

click to view entire installation 

In this series of heads I am trying to combine both abstract and representational painting. I want to bring together spontaneous marks with more realised passages such as an eye or a nose. Within this context and as much as possible, my aim is to retain the structural form of a head that had been painted in a purely representational manner. I continue to explore heads and faces as I am constantly surprised by the dramatic shifts in the depth of an expression that a particular mark or color can make. I am always fascinated that at some point in my life I have known all of these faces.