More than meets the eye for Hayes' paintings

The artwork of Cinc Hayes encourages viewers to open their eyes.

The Chapel Hill-born artist, who moved back to his hometown two months ago after spending time in Charleston and San Francisco, has his work on display at the Open Eye Cafe in Carrboro. The abstract paintings, he said, require more than a first glance.

“You have to stare at one piece for awhile to find out what’s hidden in all of them,” he said. “I’ve learned the more creative, the more that I’m allowed to stay outside the lines — not to just make a painting of a dog, but to make a painting of a dog with 1,000 other things around it combined.”

Most of Hayes’s paintings on display were created at his studio in Charleston, though a few pieces were created in Chapel Hill. The large, colorful works of art help add to the mood of Open Eye, said employee Josh Kimbrough.

“We have artists come in and out of Open Eye every month, and we keep that heavily rotated,” he said. “We also try to keep it pretty eccentric, which lends to a different feeling every month. I haven’t seen anything like this hanging here in awhile.”

Hayes describes his paintings as mixed media, combining oil and acrylic paint with cut-outs, ink, glitter and sequins. Jean Turocy, who met Hayes through volunteering, describes his work as unique and explosive.

“It looks like his imagination just erupted on the canvas,” Turocy said. “One of the things I like about it is that he uses a lot of texture in his art. He’ll put sequins or ribbons underneath the paint, and it gives it a really neat layering to it. His canvasses are just riotous. It’s crazy.”

The pieces, which will hang in the Open Eye Cafe throughout November, vary in size and subject matter. Hayes said he draws his inspiration from his daily surroundings.

“My surroundings, the things I see each day — I just try to put them onto a piece of canvas,” he said. “Most of them are really whimsical, as the keyword, and really, really colorful.”

He also said that abstract art allows him to be as creative as possible. His art has always been inspired by the teachers in his life who encouraged this creativity.

“Art teachers have always taken me under their wing my whole life somehow,” he said. “(They) always encouraged me to be more abstract and not to stay in the box. I don’t have to do what everyone else is doing.”

Though the artwork goes against the grain, Casey Robertson, a friend who helped Hayes hang his work at Open Eye, said she thinks this makes his work very special.

“I love how (his work) dances,” she said. “The pieces that I love most are the large pieces where he incorporates the sequins, and I feel like each one is a world unto its own — they’re each a world, kind of like a universe in each piece.”

Robertson said she thinks each piece is so vast that Open Eye is too small to provide each work room to fully reveal itself to its audience.

“When they are that close together, it’s less likely or harder for them to reveal themselves as what they are, which is having so much going on inside — they’re just so rich and alive with the colors.”

Hayes said he encourages viewers to spend time with each piece to fully grasp its content. Because of its creativity, Chapel Hill is the perfect place for his art to bloom.

“Charleston is really conservative, so I couldn’t find a place to do real abstract pottery and painting,” he said. “Chapel Hill seems a lot more into abstract and modern art. It’s really nice to be back in an atmosphere where people are creative.”

arts@dailytarheel.com