Artist Statement

I believe in the extraordinary lurking beneath the everyday.

Figures snake their way between the lines, speak to me in dreams, beg to be realized. A wrong turn in the street shows the seams between dimensions. Voices whisper through walls and branches, across the divide, until reality is saturated with the murmurs of possibility.

I create the imprint of this possibility, distilling my experience, translating it so that others might see what I see. To me, my work is an exploration of the limits of my imagination. I allow myself to be pulled violently along by inspiration, creating feverishly and passionately and tranquilly. Through heedless stitches, strokes, and steps, I make manifest everything I’d ever hoped would exist. Simultaneously controlling and escaping reality, I commune with the creatures in my head.

In some ways, my work deals with the futility of trying to communicate one’s experience to another, and the inability to give life to fiction. In others, it tries desperately to find the natural in a very unnatural city, to expand in a place where large spaces don’t exist. It is my hope that my work will transport others as it does me, allowing them to wonder at and explore the possibilities of their own lives.

Bio

Hailey Kenton was born in Rochester, New York in 1993. In 2015, she graduated from New York University with a BFA in Studio Art. Kenton was featured in a two-person show entitled I Would Have Ripped It Out and Kept It Forever along with artist Nora Normile at 80 Washington Square. Her work was also featured in the group show, -Scapes, at the Commons and Rosenberg Galleries in New York. Upon graduating NYU, Kenton relocated upstate in order to pursue a pottery residency with the Rochester Folk Art Guild.

Interview with the artist (PDF): Hailey Kenton

Selected Works