Hayward has developed a way of making that allows vastly different visual languages to co-exist. As his Champion Melanie Vandenbrouck, Chief Curator at Pallant House Gallery, notes, he takes painting “into a whole new realm” through his “combined use of oil paint, oil pastel and oil stick” and his “unique approach to composition.” She points to the way he can be “literally scouring the picture plane in one area, building up a relief in another, producing an exacting miniature scene in a third, and still creating a picture that ‘hangs’ together.” A remarkable control is evident in the resulting works, while still preserving a lively, shifting energy.

Hayward’s artistic vision has carried him to a new moment in his career. When asked about his greatest achievement to date, the artist refers to his first solo exhibition at Pallant House Gallery, which has just opened and runs for six months, marking his first institutional show. The exhibition sits within a wider personal story as well. Hayward also speaks of the achievement of returning to art after stepping away for several years to care for his father through a series of cancers while working as a cook in gastropubs.

Melanie Vandenbrouck first encountered Hayward’s work, as she puts it, “almost by chance, in the back room at Hales Gallery.” She was drawn in by a watercolour diptych she remembers as “pulsating with colour and intensity, luminous and mysterious in equal measure.”

“I immediately knew I wanted to work with him,” she says. She also speaks warmly of Hayward himself, calling him “incredibly kind and bouncing with enthusiasm,” and says working with him is “an absolute delight.”

Vandenbrouck describes Hayward as “one of the most original artists I have come across,” and points to the way his paintings seamlessly bring together very different materials, references and scales. “How many artists do you know who can weave together in one painting the most astonishing range of influences,” she asks, “from electronic music to modern European masters, from exquisite Indian miniatures to East Asian and West African textiles?” She describes the result as “both electrifying and absorbing.”

And there is plenty still to come for the artist. In November, Hayward will present a duo exhibition at Hales Gallery with the Estate of Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham, coinciding with Barnes-Graham’s first major retrospective at Tate St Ives. Further ahead, in November 2027, he will stage his first solo exhibition in India with Jhaveri Contemporary.