Michael Hayes Presents Art with Heart

An installation shot with my "Spuds Medusa" mask and partial artworks in background.

Michael Hayes's art seeks to heal through beauty. Her 41st exhibition is the first solo show presented by the Cliffside Park Arts Association, New Jersey.

CLIFFSIDE PARK, NJ, UNITED STATES, September 15, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Michael Hayes's artwork seeks to heal through beauty—and humor. Her exhibition is being presented by the Cliffside Park Arts Association, Cliffside Park, NJ, a group committed to the arts in their many forms. The CPAA is eager to renew the creativity of 100 years past, when poets such as William Carlos Williams and artists such as Jackson Pollock, Man Ray and many, many other arts notables summered locally.

Michael Hayes: Besotted with Beauty
Cliffside Park Arts Association Hub
207 Edgewater Rd. / Cliffside Park, NJ 07010
Sept. 27 – Nov. 2, 2025
Gallery hours: Thursdays, 3 –7 p.m. / Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, 2 – 6 p.m.

Michael Hayes: Besotted with Beauty displays more than 40 new and previously shown collages, paintings and papier-mâché masks at the Cliffside Park Arts Association Hub / 207 Edgewater Rd., Sept. 27 – Nov. 2, 2025 (All Souls Day). This is the artist's first exhibition since she was diagnosed with atrophic macular degeneration two years ago.

Through an eclectic lens, Hayes, a longtime mixed-media artist who paints in oils and constructs collages and satirical papier-mâché caricatures, explores self-expression in large and small works. Besotted with Beauty revels in her unique mix of abstraction, figuration and irony in diverse materials and techniques. It is a joyous celebration of love, skill, determination, experimentation and humor.

To see her rollicking, colorful palette, one would not guess Hayes’s drive to become a great artist arose from extreme childhood privation and abuse. But hardship energized her to try to make the world a more beautiful and just place. With help from scholarships and people who cared, as well as a sense of true vocation, she has become the mature, assured artist she is today, The artist has shown in more than 40 exhibitions, ranging from solo to juried group shows in the U.S.; Munich, Germany; and Brussels, Belgium. Her art is in many private collections in the U.S., Germany and Japan.

Opening reception: Saturday Sept. 27, 3 –7 p.m.
Midpoint artist’s talk: Sunday Oct. 12, 4 p.m. (Refreshments)
Closing reception: Sunday Nov. 2, 3 –7 p.m.

For more information, contact:
Michael Hayes, Artist, michaelhayesartist@gmail.com
Annie Merritt, CPAA Visual Chair, CliffsideParkArtsAssociation@gmail.com
Place this link in your browser to see pre-2025 work: http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpUyJXJ0Yzw

Michael Hayes Bio
I grew up in Chicago, under the federal poverty level. Art saved my life. My mother was a tuberculosis survivor with mental problems. It was just the two of us and many, many cats in a succession of single rooms. I needed relief from a difficult reality, so I drew from 2 to 4 hours a day between the ages of 5 and 18. You can't beat practice.

High school teachers steered me toward art scholarships at the Art Institute of Chicago; the Institute of Design at IIT; and an art camp in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Ultimately, people pitched in so I could take the acceptance exam for New York’s Cooper Union, then tuition-free if you passed. I graduated from Cooper Union in 1971.

I started to show regularly in a New York co-op gallery in my thirties, when my work didn't look derivative of anyone else's. But I was self-funded, worked small, reveled in cryptic irony, and was just not a package to compete with mainstream artists, whose work was huge and in-your-face. The late Ivan Karp of SoHo's OK Harris Gallery got me though, and called my work "fierce and fully mature" as early as 1982.

My style is primarily Abstract Expressionist. Its overarching theme is transcendence. My process is emotional and semireligious rather than a rational progression. All of my work has an investigative, surprise-me quality. It communicates. My gradual loss of eyesight is pushing me to find workarounds, so a new process of discovery is starting.

Michael Hayes
Michael Hayes Artist
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