Matthew Hayward

My work, which can be awkward and penetrating, divides people. The support of one critic, David Lee, caused me to be twice shortlisted for the prestigious Natwest Painting Prize, while another influential writer on art, Brian Sewell, dismissed my work claiming I needed to learn how to draw. Like all painters, my work feeds off the past but is also dependent on the flood of images of the now. I am inspired by Titian and Francis Bacon in particular and by their facility in creating grandeur out of sometimes unlikely material and their ability to suggest a presence or even an entire world through streaks and smears of paint. Francis Bacon said, "I believe in deeply ordered chaos," and although I've never been able to compete with Bacon's powerful drive or his capacity for generating an epic multi-layered mess like an archaeological dig, I am a messy and "spontaneous" worker, and I don't know where the end will be once I have started. Sometimes fragments of photos or memory became large statements and if all goes well, these shreds of experience carry a worthwhile resonance.
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