GRACE LYNNE HAYNES investigates the relationship between painting, drawing, and storytelling through her usage of materials such as pastel, pigment and chalk to communicate elaborate fictional narratives of her own creation. Haynes incorporates an unconventional approach to drawing material and surface by applying pastel and pure pigment on primed paper. She explores how the process of world building can become a zone of creative and cultural liberation and a means of addressing racism and sexism by inventing new ways of being in the world. By fluidly shifting between otherworldliness and reality she utilizes the imaginative strategies of science fiction and Afrofuturism to envision alternative futures for people of African descent. 

Haynes is a Brooklyn-based pastel artist originally hailing from California, and graduated with a M.F.A. from Rutgers University in 2022. She has exhibited internationally, notably at the 2020 Biennale De Dakar, in Senegal, the Ontario Museum of History and Art in California, and an upcoming group exhibition at the Harvey B. Gantt Center. Her accolades include being part of the inaugural cohort of Kehinde Wiley’s prestigious Black Rock Senegal Residency, featured in the PBS series State of the Arts in 2021, and her work has graced the cover of New Yorker Magazine twice. Haynes has been included in various publications and news outlets including, CNN, ELLE, LA Weekly, New American Paintings, Daily Collector, Creative Quarterly, Whitewall, and Culture Type, and was named in the 2020 edition of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Art & Style. Additionally, her work has been acquired by major private collectors, as well as key public institutions such as the Pérez Art Museum, The Bunker Artspace, The California African American Museum, and the X Museum in Beijing, China.

Click here to view a list Graces’s recent projects.