Isabelle Hayman
Isabelle Hayman is a French artist based in London. She trained as a textile designer at the ESAADuperre Paris, and completed a Master of Fine Arts from Paris I. She has extensive experience in the textile and home ware industries and spent time living in Java. Childhood connections to Africa and a love of travel deeply inform her work. Her background in textiles, decorative arts as well as inspiration from books and travel are important elements of her creative process. Isabelle's work can be viewed through the lens of her Botanical Series and Portraits of Varied Femininity.
The Botanical Series was inspired by a visit to the Rijsk Museum's porcelain department. Since then, Hayman has been collecting vintage art history books on porcelain and decorative arts. These are found mostly in antique shops or second-hand bookstores. Hayman is drawn to vintage books, specifically those with poor-quality reproduction, black and white photographs, and faded colour reproduction. The item reproduced is not exactly as it is but a copy or caricature of the object itself. The artist can then imagine the key features without being distracted by the perfect details that a modern reproduction would have shown.
Hayman imagines a universe composed by an eccentric collector, mixing emblematic pieces of ceramic or porcelain combined with a complex grid of patterns filling the foliage and the flowers on a background inspired by textiles pieces. Each piece of the drawing is like a puzzle, the foliage and flowers are a small microcosm inhabited with geometric patterns in repeat and details showing hands, eyes, faces. Different eras and textures are liberally juxtaposed in a maximalist aesthetic.
The portraits on canvases and paper are based on multiple drawings Hayman completed over many years. The same shape reinvented many times, filled with different decorative elements. A variable geometry made of strong lines. They focus mainly on profile, showing oversized eyes, mouths and some accessories, jewellery, and glasses reminiscent of Egyptian decor. The skin is coloured or filled with patterns, triangles, chevrons, stripes. Hayman plays with assumed symbols of female representation to create hybrid portraits with strong lines and vivid colour combinations. The composition is mainly a face, or a profile looking to the left with the neck and the shape of the shoulders showing.