Like looking into a dream, Bayly Lay’s work is as fiercely free as it is tenderly intimate.
Bayly’s paintings thrum with the history of her homeland, the rocky mountains of the West, the foundation upon which the most delicate creature can make its gesture. She was raised on her family’s fifth generation ranch in the foothills of Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness by her mother, renowned artist Amy Lay, and her herd of semi-wild horses. It is this harmony between patient roots and the fierce break of a horse let loose that grant such complex spirit to her style; both bravehearted and deeply grounded.
Bayly’s work speaks in memory and mirage, immersing the beholder in a sense of surreal familiarity. Inherited with her mother’s bad eyes, she devotes her impressionistic style to her innate love for a good blur.
“You look at something, you see, you think. If you can’t see, then when you look, you’re stranded without analysis, you feel first. When people look at my work, I can see the wheels turning to think, what is that? What am I looking at? In those moments, a work of art has the power to strike you differently. It speaks not to your mind.”
Bayly paints primarily in oil pigment, but found her beginning in charcoal and poetry, both of which make their way into her paintings to this day. A striking boldness, an unorthodox approach, and a true sense of emotion are all central characteristics of this young artist.