Mailer (blue and black)

Hallard’s modus operandi is the dissolution of the pictorial plane into flat areas of color to create an abstract ‘open-ended’ space. He often uses rather obvious, bordering on the humorous, structural strategies to perplex the viewer’s response. For example, his series of Architectural Butterfly(s) suggest a corner of a room flattened out. However, what he is able to do through subtle color relationships is to open up a well-trod visual trope into something more flowing, even mysterious.
In other work, what first appears as horizontal stripes on a flat surface, upon further inspection turn into planes of color expressing rhythmic balances and shifting relationships coming from the artist’s long relationship with the surf and the sea.
Shaped canvases, actually made from honeycombed aluminum, tease out the basic architectural form—the box. Though, Hallard’s boxes are actually just simple flat surfaces that either allude to the external form or flip into an interior architectural rendition. Again, he is happy playing around with expectations while thwarting singular logical outcomes.