Hayley Goodhead

For a generation of would be zookeepers and budding Zoologists, Johnny Morris’ Animal Magic was compulsive childhood TV viewing, make no mistake. Especially if you were a child growing up in the 1980s with unlimited access to BBC1. Before up-and-coming new contemporary fine artist, Hayley Goodhead’s time, admittedly, yet this exciting new creative talent has clearly been inspired by animals in both a domestic setting and the wild (or zoo-residing captivity) if her latest collection is anything to go by. However, Goodhead’s ‘Animal Magic’ hasn’t solely been inspired by the cute and cuddlies, all furry and fawning. No. there’s visual evidence of much more than animal goings on, as we cast our eager eyes on commercial and fashionable signs of a more recent time than the 80s Beeb. Like bar codes, Paul Smith primary colour stripes, Burberry and dog tooth check patterns and target boards. Indeed, welcome to 2013 and more expressly, the life and creative time of one Hayley Goodhead.

Born and bred in Staffordshire, England, Goodhead showed artistic endeavour and enterprise from an early age, and this creative promise perpetuated through her secondary schooling, resulting in attendance on a degree course at the University of Gloucestershire. This BA (Hons) course in Fine Art afforded Goodhead the opportunity to further develop, expand and perfect her fledgling skills and illustrative attributes, yet it also provided an inadvertent platform for her future career to take off from a completely unprecedented source. During the second year of her degree course Goodhead was approached with a commission to paint the likeness of a black Labrador, obviously based on seeing her artistic potential elsewhere previously. Keen to gain the experience and challenge herself at this level, Goodhead fulfilled the brief, and on the back of its success in the eyes of the commissioning party watched as further commissions rolled in.

It was during this period that Goodhead sought part-time employment to help sustain her living costs during university, securing a weekend position at a local art gallery. This enables Goodhead to witness and observe a diverse selection of contemporary artists’ work up close and personal on a regular basis, which as any aspiring artist would do, she absorbed with relish. However it also gave rise to Goodhead obtaining her own shop window as such, as her gallery employers soon caught wind of her talents and provided her with wall space in which to promote her own wares. The rest as they say is relative, and still very recent, history, as on the back of her local exposure and successes she came to attentions of renowned UK art publishing house, DeMontford Fine Arts, who soon snapped her up and now represent Goodhead and her art.

To that art though, and it’s clear to see why Goodhead is making positive strides on the contemporary art scene, thanks to her diligenceand exuberant creativity and artistic thought process and bringing together of, at first glance, the most inappropriate of subject matters. Almost Pop Art to a certain degree, there’s definitely elements of Lichtenstein and Warhol in the way in which Goodhead merges the ordinary, dare we utter it, mundane approximation of animals – dogs, zebras, owls, etc – with graphically explosive, yet starkly contrasting commercial signs of our current times as explored at the top. It’s this bold and brave approach and execution of her subjects that make Goodhead’s work stand head and shoulders above her peers though in our book, and why we see her going from strength to strength from hereonin.