The “Inside Drawings” are a series of 100 drawings in colored pencil, and 50 drawings in ink, on 8-inch square paper. The artist uses her archive of stencils—outlines of packaging, and the perforations of boxes—to create luminous drawings of smaller shapes floating inside, or hovering across, a larger shape. Intimate and highly detailed, the drawings become object-like; there is a sense of an interior space whose boundaries thrum with those of its container. All Inside Drawings are born of the same method, yet no two are alike; this points to both the rich variety of sources and materials that Hayes has collected, but also to the flow-state decisions and quality of attention that are hallmarks of her practice. 

In a recent series of drawings called “Maintenance Project”, Hayes unearths forgotten and surprising forms from catalogs of farm equipment from the 1940s and 50s. The shapes, now untethered from their former, highly ordered context, float amid others in a new and unscripted constellation. For Hayes, the works pay homage to the original, largely anonymous, draftsmen and designers of these machines. 

JS-93, 2021. Flashe, acrylic, oil stick on corrugate cardboard. 33 x 44 x 2 inches.

In Hayes’ larger works, flattened cardboard boxes provide both outline and surface on which to paint. It is here that the primacy of materials in Hayes’ work is most viscerally felt. The shapes of these discarded boxes, with their crushed and bent edges, suggest something “digital”. The perforations in these surfaces—a pattern of holes, for example, or cutout handles in produce boxes, gently curved to match the angle of a hand —are hugely important for the artist, who sees them as “a kind of code.” They are a visual punctuation against fields of distinct forms and color, and a dimensional disruption of the figure-ground relationship. 

For Hayes, “Something Else” refers to the oblique turning from a specific or easily-articulated meaning in her work and a commitment to process. It is ultimately about materials, about being in the studio, and the series of decisions made there. Hayes points to the words of Jim Dine, who says it perfectly: “When you paint every day, all year long, then the subject is essentially the act of working.” It is only fitting that Hayes' subjects are materials originally made to do just that—work.

Annie Hayes received her B.F.A. from the University of Iowa. Over the past four decades of her career, she has been featured in dozens of exhibitions in New York and across the country, and has participated in numerous residencies in Colorado, Vermont and Maine.  Hayes is a finalist for the NYFA Artist Fellowship (2023) in Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts, and received a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Support Grant (2022) for the “Maintenance Project” series, among many other distinctions. Hayes lives and works in Delhi, New York, and in SoHo, New York City. 

Selection of small constructions

JS-100, 2022. Flashe, pastel, pencil on corrugate cardboard. 33 x 45 x 3 inches.