Influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, art nouveau, stained glass, and more; Halsey presents a surprising contemporary twist on classic vintage styles.

In the words of the artist:

By the time I complete something, I often forget why I started, or the focus may shift
throughout the process. My mind races off in many directions and I try to wrangle my thoughts
to make sense of them – to see how they connect. Sometimes I pull back and relax, only to have
new thoughts come pouring into the vacant spaces. My paintings are the same. I try to
squeeze as many different ideas into one space as possible until it’s too much, then I edit. The
process is a roller coaster of ups and downs, a pushing and pulling between concise and
abstract ideas. Loose and painterly brush strokes are overlapped within precise boundaries.
The whole may seem to make sense from a distance, but the parts themselves are often
incongruous and undefined, an impressionism of sorts.

Painting to me is like verbalizing a dream, or replicating a memory – it exists in layers and can’t
always be explained. Some parts are defined, others are out of focus. Maybe it never makes
sense, or maybe only part of it does. Sometimes it’s a feeling trying to be captured in shapes
and colors. Some memories are only a snapshot, like a painting. The Bernie Taupin lyric from
Your Song comes to mind – He remembers the eyes were the sweetest but can’t remember the
color – an obvious detail is forgotten for the sake of the greater whole. It took me a long time to
understand that. And maybe it’s a misinterpretation on my part, or I’m overthinking it. I’m not
sure it matters. Anyway, it’s only one line from a much larger whole of a song.

When starting out to create these paintings, I wanted to involve computers and machinery in
the process – a compromise between the impending AI takeover and old-fashioned physical
painting. They begin as traditional drawings and paintings of mine that are fed into a program,
which simplifies them into a form that can be machine carved into wood. Literal negative
spaces, to expose the wall, and postcard borders are added. Then the images are routed into
the surface and painting begins. Sometimes the colors are well thought out, and other times
they are allowed to come together spontaneously… and then changed and augmented (it’s all
about the journey). Each piece follows a slightly different path to completion. They mean
different things to me at different times. I urge you to discover your own interpretation.