Tyler Hays is an American artist, born and raised in rural Oregon. Throughout his life, he has worked in a wide array of mediums — painting, furniture, ceramics, fashion, and more — with a focus on material science and engineering. He often says the unifying subject of his work is finding the lines between things, noting that “the harder you look, the more similar everything becomes.”
Hays grew up with a strong desire to make everything in his universe from scratch. This foundational impulse started very young — sewing and cooking, taking apart his toys — and followed him to art school, where he mixed his own paints and made his paint brushes from scratch with hand-pounded silver ferrules.
Hays’s puzzle paintings, like the one before you from his Harbor Series, merge traditional landscape imagery with intricate jigsaw patterns, reflecting his fascination with mechanical complexity and natural beauty.
While painting continues to be his primary and most consistent medium, Hays has become best known for BDDW, a renowned furniture and design brand based in Philadelphia.
Hays has garnered an international reputation for both his furniture designs and captivating paintings, celebrating simplicity, utility, and craftsmanship as a cohesive work of art.
Have a few moments?
Consider looking at this single painting for 10 minutes, uninterrupted. This exercise is based on an assignment that Jennifer Roberts, an art history professor at Harvard, gives to her students. More information on this exercise is available here and here.
Ready to try?
Scoot up one of the chairs we’ve placed nearby. Consider silencing notifications on your phone or other devices. When you’re ready, set a 10-minute timer on your phone and begin focusing on the painting.
Try it and you may be surprised what you see, and how you feel.
