Isabelle Hayman

Isabelle Hayman is a French artist based in London. She trained as a
textile designer in Paris, and completed a Master of Fine Arts from
Paris I. She has extensive experience in textiles and spent time living
in Java. Childhood connections to Africa and a love of travel deeply
inform her work as well as her background in textiles and an avid
curiosity for the decorative arts.
Her practice spans from a series of detailed ink drawings still life to a
more rhythmic, fluid expression focusing on female portraits.
The series of large detailed ink drawings was inspired by a visit to the
Rijsk Museum’s porcelain department. Isabelle imagines scenes
created by an eccentric collector, mixing emblematic pieces of ceramic
or porcelain combined with a complex grid of patterns filling the foliage
and the flowers on a background inspired by textiles pieces. Each
piece of the drawing is like a puzzle, the foliage and flowers are small
microcosms inhabited with geometric patterns and surrealist
references showing hands, eyes, faces. Different eras and textures
are liberally juxtaposed in a maximalist aesthetic.