Clarity Haynes: Portals (2024)

Clarity Haynes: Portals
by Clarity Haynes (Artist, Contributor), Leah DeVun (Contributor), Harry Dodge (Contributor), Jeanne Vaccaro (Contributor)
Hardcover: ‎152 pages
Item Weight: ‎2.35 pounds
Dimensions: ‎9 x 0.7 x 12 inches
ISBN-13: ‎979-8218181932
Publisher: New Discretions (February 20, 2024)

To artist Clarity Haynes (born 1971), the correlation between flesh and paint is alchemical. Portals is the first survey celebrating her paintings. The artist explores of childbirth, queerness, gender, and ritual. Her queer activist point of view shifts the gaze to a decidedly visceral, sensual engagement with paint, challenging what bodies can be.

About Clarity Haynes

Clarity Haynes —Born in 1971 in McAllen, Texas, and based in Brooklyn, NY, and upstate New York, Clarity Haynes is known for her long-standing explorations of the torso as a site for painted portraiture. Works in her Breast/Chest Portrait Project, always painted from life and usually monumental in scale, have focused on themes of healing, trauma, and self-determination. Feminist and queer craft practices are often honoured in her work. Bright colours, lively compositions and multiple narratives conjoin in the depictions of both bodies and altars. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, New Discretions, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and many others. Her writings have been published in Hyperallergic and Artnews among others. Her other book is the exhibition catalogue: Clarity Haynes: Altar-ed Bodies (Pages: 32) Publisher: Heinzfeller Nileisist & New Discretions (2022). This chapbook was created to accompany Haynes’ 2020 Altar-ed Bodies exhibition at Denny Dimin Gallery in New York. It features poems by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Jibz Cameron, Shelley Marlow, and more, juxtaposed against colour images of Haynes’ paintings.