Bryan Haynes

NEW REGIONALISM - The Art of Bryan Haynes

Historical figures, Native Americans and local characters inhabit the sweeping views of the New Regionalist paintings by Bryan Haynes. The valleys and mesas, bends and curves of the New Mexico landscape seem to shape the artists inspirations - sculpted in current design.

Since graduating of the Art Center College of Design in 1983 his artwork has been represented in New York, San Francisco, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Santa Fe. Recent corporate and institutional commissions include murals and large scale paintings for; The Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, The Missouri Botanical Garden’s permanent collection, The Westward Expansion Memorial Museum at the Arch, Novus International Inc., and the Danforth Plant Science Center.  Additional patrons include Disney, Estee Lauder, Warner Bros., Toblerone – Switzerland, Universal Studios, IBM, Nike, Sony Music Corp., and Anhueser Busch. 

Awards include - The Society of Illustrators-New York awards, Print Magazine Awards, Communication Arts Awards, and Graphis-Switzerland.  “Haynes paintings feel familiar. His heroic history works have been likened to the WPA style of the 1930s as well as to that of American Dreamers Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish. Haynes (fairly) claims himself a descendent of Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry by calling his work Neo-regionalism. His paintings build upon the early-20th century Regionalism movement by including images, events and some of the artistic innovations of the past 100 years. The physiognomy of his figures calls to mind the strong, swaying bodies found in Benton’s Cradling Wheat (1938) and Curry’s The Mississippi (1935) at the St. Louis Art Museum.  And like the figures in Benton and Curry’s paintings, each man and woman found in Haynes’ paintings is made noble in the face of an adversity that smacks of adventure.

Haynes’ paintings should not be dismissed as mere imitation. The Regionalism movement that was at its height in the 1930s was also backward looking. Idealized agricultural scenes did not incorporate the most recent industrial agricultural trends, but focused on traditional, already outdated, methods of working the land. Haynes’ paintings capture the mood and atmosphere of 1930s Regionalists, but disregard realities that clash with the aesthetic to emerge as a modern offshoot.”

By Sarah Hermes Griesbach