Biography

Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on March 22, 1971, Adam Joel Hayward moved to the Cincinnati, Ohio area in 1973.

Adam spent the majority of his adolescence working in the fields of his family owned and operated winery in Clarksville, Ohio. Responsible for a vast number of outdoor, farm-related activities, Adam developed a profound understanding of nature's beauty and sublime tendencies at an early age.

Fran Harlan, Adam's maternal grandmother, played a vital role in nurturing his artistic abilities. A fine artist herself and an enthusiastic painter of her farmhouse surroundings, Fran Harlan introduced Adam to the joys of depicting one's natural surroundings on paper and canvas.

In 1983, Adam's father was diagnosed with manic depression, and spent the rest of his life in and out of various hospitals. Unfortunately, his father's illness forced the family to sell their winery and move to the Cincinnati suburbs due to financial strain. In 1986, Adam's family moved to a gentrified section of Over the Rhine in downtown Cincinnati.

At this point, Adam made the decision to transfer from the Cincinnati Country Day Schools to the School for the Creative and Performing Arts, and began seriously considering the arts as a future profession.

In 1989, after winning a number of awards for his artistic endeavors, Adam enrolled in the graphic design department at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Convinced that advertising was his calling after winning multiple competitions, he decided to join the freelance advertising workforce after graduation.

In 1993, Adam's father died of Lou Gehrig's disease, only one year after being diagnosed. This tragic event took control of Adam's life in unprecedented forms, and caused him to begin questioning his decision to develop a career in advertising. The "understanding" Adam gained from his father's passing would eventually change and define the course of his life as an artist.

After accepting and completing an interim position as the Upper School Fine Arts Teacher for the Cincinnati Country Day Schools in 1995, Adam returned to Miami University with a newfound empowerment, enrolling in a Master's program for certification in art education.

While at Miami, Adam was given the opportunity to embark on his first truly serious body of artwork. Adam found himself heavily influenced by the sublime characters illustrated in the works of Spanish painter Francisco de Zubearan. In fact, the events leading up to this point in his life seemed to mesh with this style of painting.

Heavy religious overtones began to spark Adam's interest in painting inside local Cincinnati churches. In 1997, he was asked to paint a mural-sized piece at the Mater Ecclesia Institute in Hyde Park for the resident cloistered nuns. This opportunity changed Adam's perceptions of painting as an art form, as well as the process of painting itself.

Toward the end of the Mater Ecclesia project, Adam accepted a position at the Good Hope School in the Virgin Islands, serving as the Middle/Upper School Fine Arts Director.

The light, water and beautiful atmosphere of the Virgin Islands began to influence Adam's artistic renderings. Soon, he noticed echoes of turn-of-the-19th century artists such as Van Gogh, Monet and Turner in his works. However, the majority of his works still portrayed his personal love of the relationship between nature and self.

After enjoying much success as a teacher, Adam began gaining notoriety as a fine artist throughout the Virgin Islands. Eventually, his focus moved from teaching to art production, and he decided to make the necessary sacrifices for beginning the next major focus of his life.

In the summer of 2000, Adam moved to Taos, New Mexico to be with his family and concentrate on the art and business of painting full time. While setting up his studio, he began his third body of work. Utilizing the Impressionists as a means of understanding color, Adam moved to the simplification of line while tackling the complex religious culture associated with the town of Taos. The subject matter depicted in Adam's third body of work became reminiscent of Chigall's works and dreamlike associations.

In March of 2001, Adam decided to expand his market by returning to Cincinnati and setting up a second studio. As a Cincinnati artist, his fourth body of work became metaphorically related to the new life that surrounded him. A new sense of beauty entered into Adam's palate.

In 2003, he began to look at the way light and forms interact in the fantasmagorical intricacies of nature. All of his compositions are based upon this dynamic symmetry, guided by his graphic design background. However, this body of work developed into a search for the most intimate within the greatest expanse.

His canvases center on a single element, a bough or segment of a tree, and are meant to acknowledge nature and the beauty of her complexities found in each single entity. Every leaf or flowering bud is in harmony with the grace of each of its neighbors.

Combined, they create a crescendo that lyrically evokes an emotion of awe, power, or reflection. In his landscapes, these single entities move out into the expanse of their surroundings. The trees, the rocks, the clouds, all are depicted to communicate nature’s majestic force.

He found his original inspiration for this particular series in early Chinese works, beginning with the Northern Song dynasty, (approximately 970 A.D.). The ability of those artists to communicate the endless expanses of depth, combined with the subtleties of intimate detail, compelled him to transfer those nuances of Eastern expression into his understanding of Western light.

He seems to have an unrelenting desire to capture nature’s limitless range of profound moments; the fragments in time when she pronounces her surreal capacity in light and form, and the impossible is manifest.

Written by Chris Rice