Barnett

Original painting by Jo Hay Measures 7" x 5" oil on canvas This series of mini rabbit portraits is flower-themed. British-American painter Jo Hay has graced us with another mini-series of spectacular rabbit portraits. British figurative painter Jo Hay studied and worked in Manhattan for years before making her current home in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She is widely known for large-scale paintings that explore sexuality, gender, and identity, as in her self-portrait Dodger which placed as a semi-finalist in the 2015 BP Portrait Award. Hay is fascinated by human psychological and biological perception of gender, and her interest in subjects with both male and female characteristics was first inspired by the glittering androgyny of British glam rock musicians in the nineteen-seventies. Rabbitude marks a departure from these portraits; it showcases new works in a series that Hay has continued to explore since her graduate school days at the New York Academy of Art. “I initially imagined the rabbit paintings would be purely experimental,” she says of her first examples painted in 2010, calling them a reaction to long hours studying traditional figurative painting. “I very quickly realized that they are equally relevant portraits in themselves.”