Fragmented Horizons: The Art of Rob Strati and Chris Hayman

Working from radically different materials and processes, Strati and Hayman arrive at a surprisingly  shared territory. Strati constructs his landscapes from fragments of antique and vintage porcelain, extending the decorative imagery of broken plates into intricate drawn worlds. Hayman, working primarily in oil on canvas, approaches landscape from the opposite direction: rather than describing a recognizable scene, she distills nature into color, movement, space, and gesture. One artist begins with something tangible that has survived from the past; the other translates the fleeting experience of looking, feeling, and remembering. 

Together, their works propose that landscape is never entirely objective. It is something we assemble - piece by piece, impression by impression - through what we remember, what we  notice, and what the imagination supplies. 

About Chris Hayman  

Chris Hayman has developed a distinctive language of abstract painting over several decades,  drawing deeply on the natural world while resisting literal representation. Working primarily in oil on canvas, she creates energetic compositions through vivid contrasting colors, gestural forms, thick painterly surfaces, and carefully considered areas of negative space. Rather than depicting a  particular landscape, Hayman captures its atmosphere - the sensation of light, movement, foliage, space, and seasonal change. 

Hayman's interest in rhythm and movement is informed in part by her early training as a classical pianist and her involvement with theater and dance before she devoted herself to visual art. She  studied Art History at the University of Maryland and later earned a degree in Art at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she began her sustained investigation into painting. Today, her Northern California farm and its surrounding landscape remain an important source of inspiration. Across her practice, recognizable references to nature gradually give way to abstraction, allowing color, texture, gesture, and space to carry the emotional experience of place. 

About Rob Strati  

Rob Strati is an American multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses drawing, sculpture, and mixed media. He is best known for his Fragmented series, which began when a porcelain plate inherited by his wife from her late mother accidentally broke. Rather than discard the fragments, Strati began to imagine the landscape contained within the plate extending beyond its original boundaries. 

His resulting works combine shattered porcelain with meticulous pen-and-ink drawing. Strati carefully incorporates the surviving decorative imagery into expansive compositions, allowing  figures, architecture, vegetation, and landscapes to continue outward from the fragments onto the surrounding paper. The break is never concealed; instead, it becomes the essential point from which a new world emerges. His process transforms an object associated with loss and domestic  history into something imaginative and newly alive. Strati studied Art History at The Ohio State University and has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Royal Academy of Arts  in London, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the de Young Museum, and the International Print Center New York.