William H. Hays – He Sees and Paints the Better Angels of Our Nature

William H. Hay’s ‘Local Portrait Series’ will be honored and recognized in the front window of the new Angel Boy Gallery, located next to Shin La Restaurant, for a month beginning this Friday. The exhibit will include a few of the actual portraits!

“I Discovered I Could Express A Person’s Essence!” — William H. Hays

“In the early 2000s, I was in an artist’s ‘dry spell’ similar to a writer’s block. Friends counseled me that I ought to try a different approach. I thought about it, then I took a trip overseas to relax and await new inspiration. So I happened to be at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and saw a Rembrandt; a portrait of an old woman. I was surprised to discover that because of the qualities of the portrait, I knew who she was! Then I immediately had the thought:

”I can do that!” — William H. Hays

… and so he could, and did! Thus began an important intermediate stage in noted Brattleboro artist William H. Hays’ creative career. When he returned from Europe, he started asking some of Brattleboro’s beautiful and/or more eclectic residents to sit for their portraits. What you see here before you are good examples of that phase, William’s well-known ‘Local Portrait Series’. mostly in oil and watercolor; a string of stunning, visually-exciting character studies and portrayals.

When he began this series, William had been painting in his Main Street studio for well over a decade, plus operating the ‘Artist’s Loft’ bed & breakfast. At least two additional artistic growth phases were to emerge for William before, this year, he made the decision to close his gallery and the Artist’s Loft after nearly 25 years in business on the 3rd floor of the Union Block building on Main Street. William is not leaving town, however; his art has merely been changing with the times, and today he finds more rewards in creating his latest series: complex and beautiful limited-edition multi-color lino-block prints.

William H. Hays’ art has been featured in the best galleries in the region, with many dedicated exhibitions of his work around the northeast and beyond. His paintings, mostly masterful landscapes and studies of natural and topographic settings, hang today in selective, cutting-edge galleries, in the staid, more reserved spaced dedicated to ‘classic’ representational art, in the homes of the leading personalities of our day, and in the elegant offices and august halls where people with great influence help chart our way into the future.

Perhaps it is fitting now that William is moving from the Union Block building, which bears as a prominent legend on its façade the name of its builder ‘Amedeo de Angelis’ (lover of God; of the angels), that a few of his portraits, which seem to capture the spirits, the auras of their subjects, sojourn here in the brand-new ‘Angel Boy’ Gallery for awhile. For it seems William has been admiring us, seeing things in us that we might not even see in ourselves, for quite a long time now. What better friend could we have than someone who captures beauty in us and around us, and preserves it for posterity?

Impressed? So are we! See his amazing art today! William Hays’ artwork – limited edition, intricate, almost impossibly-detailed multi-color lino-block prints, will continue to be exhibited and sold about two blocks away, in the Gallery in the Woods Studio at 145 Main Street. William’s web site,

theartistsloft.com

… includes electronic versions of many of his best works. Plus, William’s blog, featuring a wonderful historiography of William’s career since the turn of the century, can be read and accessed at:

theartistsloft.com/news.html