7.8.13

The Beautiful Works Of Max Hayslette

By Nita McKinney


Max Hayslette showed his artistic potential long before he received any formal training. This world renowned landscape artist was born in West Virginia and was only a teenager when he held the first exhibition of his paintings. He had them hanging in the windows of a furniture store. Later, he went to Illinois to study art at the Art Institute of Chicago.

It was while in Chicago that he was exposed to the Bauhaus movement which had a significant influence on modern architecture and design. There were many followers of this movement living in Chicago while he was studying there. It was inevitable that he was influenced by these ideas that left a lasting impression on him.

After his studies, he worked for over twenty years as both an industrial and an interior designer. He did not do any serious fine art during these years but made a decision to return to it. Since then his output has been prolific and he has become world renowned.

He has traveled all over the world and likes to work on site where he takes photos, makes sketches and takes great care in recording colors. He feels that each place has a temperature of its own. His landscapes transport the viewer to many destinations, from the warm hills of Tuscany to the cool skies of a lakeside in France. Like Cezanne, his use of cool colors against warm colors make his paintings vibrant.

Once he has decided on a particular subject, he studies it very well. He absorbs all the details and although he says that memory plays a part in his process, his works are also inspired by his imagination. He regards capturing the essence of a subject as more important than any detail.

He begins his paintings by focusing on the areas of light and dark. He is influenced in this by the Asian artists who are able to reduce forms to simple abstracts. Once he has this composition of foreground, middle ground and background, he can start to think about adding depth and color. In adding these elements, his style becomes more impressionistic in nature.

He succeeds in capturing the beauty of a natural landscape, sometimes with extremely vivid detail and at other times in a way that seems to capture more the way we remember and feel than the way a camera would capture a fixed image. This is why he does not regard himself as an impressionist or a realist. He has a style all his own which he regards as a kind of updated impressionism.

Today, he lives in Washington in the town of Kingston. He enjoys painting in silence and continues to produce works of a timeless nature, desired by many art lovers all over the world. Fortunately, his works are not only available in galleries but also in poster form, making them more affordable and accessible.

This artist has produced a wide array of enticing landscapes that are to be seen in many corporate and private collections around the world. His works are also sold in poster form, while many galleries and art stores carry his originals. He has also held many exhibits of his work through the years. The Max Hayslette Archives Collection is housed at West Virginia University.




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