The route towards refining your practice can often be a long one, testing out different mediums, subjects and even creative industries until you find something that can effectively convey your aesthetic voice. For Hayden James Bone, an interest in drawing led him through careers in illustration, animation, and product design, until he discovered the visual potential of paint. From here, his artistic alter-ego SCRABL was born.
“I explored many styles to eventually arrive at my latest work where I feel I have got a lot closer to my vision as an artist”, he says. “The journey has been very introspective and provided a meaningful path of progress and maturity.”
The artist has labelled his style as “contextual pop”, bringing together the visual intensity and preoccupation with mass culture of Pop Art with the Context Art movement of the 1990s that dealt with the notion of art itself, which he executes with a distinctly contemporary spirit. Using the universally recognisable form of the scrabble board, SCRABL engages in wordplay and humour to deconstruct famous phrases or concepts. These are sourced from an array of fields, from philosophy to popular culture, politics to cartoons, and famous figures contemporary and past.
“I’m fortunate with my style to have an endless storehouse to draw from”, he says, “and I am overflowing with concepts and ideas for new work.”
His process is not a linear one, often working on pieces from several series simultaneously, as a single painting from its inception as a digital design to its execution in acrylics can take days to complete. His days are long, hopping from one concept to another as paint dries and ideas form, often working well into the night.
Currently, SCRABL is working on three series which look to diverse sources for inspiration. Don’t make me laugh is his most recent undertaking, playing on feelings of nostalgia and whimsy by appropriating familiar cartoon characters both past and present. These works play on the recognisability of their subject, leaving the viewer to decode well known phrases as they lay interwoven across the canvas.
In contrast, Audi Disce Duc (Listen, learn, lead) utilises quotes from historical figures, using a more subdued palette and tactile surfaces to evoke a contemplative experience for the viewer. Scrabble as a game is not just a source of fun, but is meant to provoke the intellect and make the players think and strategise, lending itself to introspection. The artist extends his use of quotes to more modern figures in Don’t quote me, which uses influential statements and playful quips attributed to artists and writers, which turns observing his works into an analysis on art and artmaking itself.
SCRABL has recently been announced as the newest addition to Maddox Gallery’s stable. Maddox Gallery has spaces in London, the United Kingdom, Gstaad, Switzerland, and Los Angeles in the USA.
James Nicholls, Chairman of Maddox Gallery describes SCRABL’s work as “illuminous”. With a “vibrant use of colours, the artist presents evocative and compositional feelings of subject and space.”
The chequered surface of the scrabble board is a place of possibility, which SCRABL adapts and modifies to provoke emotive responses from his audience. At times humorous, and others introspective, this artist’s works express the many ways that art can act as a vehicle for ideas. Building a narrative between textural, thoroughly worked backdrops and meaningful interlocking phrases, SCRABL’s matured style brings new meaning to the act of decoding art.
“In my personal and professional opinion,” says Nicholls, “Hayden Bone will achieve well-deserved recognition in the artworld.
