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James Hayward, a San Francisco-born abstract painter whose heavily textured monochrome works made him a distinctive presence in California art for decades, has died at 82.<\/p>\n
William Turner Gallery<\/p>\n
James Hayward<\/a>, a San Francisco-born abstract painter\u00a0whose rugged, richly worked monochromes helped define a distinctly West Coast approach to contemporary painting, has died at 82.<\/p>\n His studio announced in an Instagram post<\/a> Thursday, April 16, that Hayward \u201ctransitioned peacefully this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n Though he never became a household name, Hayward was revered in California art circles as a painter\u2019s painter: a fiercely independent artist whose thick, ridged surfaces and all-over fields of color pushed monochrome painting toward something more physical, sensual and unruly.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Over decades, his work appeared in major museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the\u00a0San Francisco Museum of Modern Art<\/a>, while generations of younger artists encountered him as both a formidable presence and an influential teacher. William Turner Gallery<\/a> said two of Hayward\u2019s paintings are included in its current group exhibition, \u201cSurface Tension.\u201d<\/p>\n Born in San Francisco on Sept. 22, 1943, Hayward studied at San Diego State University, UCLA and the University of Washington, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree. He spent much of his life in Los Angeles and later lived and worked in Moorpark, where his ranch, dogs and cowboy persona became part of his legend.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n That persona was not an act. In profiles over the years, Hayward emerged as part philosopher, part outlaw and part master craftsman: a lanky painter in a white hat, fond of tall tales, hard-won aesthetic convictions and long riffs about Titian, Pollock and the moral force of art.<\/p>\n \u201cArt\u2019s a first-hand experience,\u201d he said in an undated interview with Flaunt<\/a>. \u201cMeaning, when you walk up to it and you look really close at it, you discover things you didn\u2019t see from across the room.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Hayward first gained attention in the 1970s and 1980s. Early on, he made flatter so-called automatic paintings. Later, he became best known for dense monochrome abstractions built from repeated strokes of oil paint layered into peaks, furrows and shimmering surfaces. Roberts Projects<\/a> gallery described those later works as paintings in which color, texture and structure fused into an \u201cirreproducible distinct identity.\u201d<\/p>\n To Hayward, painting was less about image than about mark-making, equality and presence.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my monochromes I try to avoid there ever being a special place,\u201d he told Artillery<\/a> in 2015. \u201cThere\u2019s no chosen place. It\u2019s totally proletariat, the marking. I want the corners to be as important as the center and I want every mark to be equal in terms of importance.\u201d<\/p>\n That commitment made him difficult to neatly categorize. His work shared DNA with minimalism, process art and Abstract Expressionism, but never sat comfortably inside any of them.<\/p>\n