James 'Jimmy' Hayward, defining figure of West Coast monochrome painting, dies at 81

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of the revered artist and dear friend, James “Jimmy” Hayward, who died this morning. Born in San Francisco in 1943, Hayward spent the majority of his life in Los Angeles, where he became a defining figure in the region’s post-minimal and monochrome painting tradition. Until recently, Hayward lived in an airstream on his beloved horse farm in Moorpark, an image that suited him: a painter who was part philosopher, part cowboy, and wholly singular. For more than four decades, Hayward pursued a deeply committed investigation into gesture, materiality, and the physical act of painting. Associated with the lineage of West Coast abstraction, he developed a distinctive monochrome practice defined by densely worked surfaces of thick oil paint. Built through deliberate, diagonal strokes across