What lies beneath the surface?  What might happen if we access it?  These questions are central to Hayes’ work.   There is a need to uncover a space which is anticipated as welcoming yet sensed as simultaneously repellant and sets up a visceral tension between anticipation and access, seduction, and danger.  These juxtapositions become meditations on larger psychological states, examining the submerged darkness within.

Imagery remains vaguely subterranean and emerges from a process that is as reliant upon drawn media as upon painted.  Earthen references are reiterated within the tonal palette. There are glimpses of what lies within, though entry is barred.  Billowing shapes hold the viewer aloft and safely at a distance as access points emerge in one instance to then break apart in another. Structures appear briefly only to dissipate and dissolve.  These works seek to make sense of a world just outside of reach, beckoning yet elusive.