Past Exibitions:

2011 Road Trip
So What Gallery
Düseldorf, Germany
(permanent representation)

2009 West – East
The Betsy Hotel, Tbilisi, Georgia

2005 Drive-By
ArtSpace Forum Gallery, Salt Lake City, Utah

2004 MXF & Bing
Sponto Gallery, Venice Beach, California

2003 Trade Cities
Washington Theater, Los Angeles, California

2003 One Hundred Photographs
Monarch Scooters, San Francisco, California

2003 One Hundred Photographs
Sponto Gallery, Venice Beach, California

2002 Old Frame Prints
Vesuvios, San Francisco, California

2002 Ambervisions
Sponto Gallery, Venice Beach, California

2002 Ambervisions Sneak Preview
Greening Street, Portland, Oregon

2000 Trade Cities
Pico St. Theater, Santa Monica, California

1998 Blue Children: Photo-Paintings
SoHo, San Diego, California

1996 Various Works: Photo-Paintings
Grunts & Postures, Salt Lake City, Utah

1994 Tree: A Permanent Installation
Irving St. Lofts, Portland, Oregon

1993 Seed Tree Fruit: Sculptures and Photography
Trix

Haus Gallery, Portland, Oregon

Limited Edition Prints are available.
Contact Paul for more information.

www.PaulHadley.com
paulhadley@me.com
California, USA
+1 (310) 990-2128

1966 born in Barstow, California, a few blocks from Route 66.
Paul Hadley grew up in California, Utah and in Hawaii.
Studies: Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
Paul Hadley lives in Pioneertown, CA and in Salt Lake City, UT.

I remember driving with my family all over the American Southwest as a child - riding in the backseat of our station wagon – my father playing Johnny Cash on his 8-track player in the car – setting the mood for the country western landscapes and the long lonely highways linking them together.

As a child I was fascinated by the cartoon of The Roadrunner and The Coyote – the highways, the desert backdrop, the colors. I can see some of that in my work today

In my twenties I used to throw darts at a map to randomly pick places to drive to by myself.

Long days of driving open up the possibilities of stumbling upon that perfect haphazard assemblage, that special ray of sun, the fluffiest cloud, the saddest tree. I never stop, I shoot while driving. Roadsigns become paintings, police cars become toys – everything becomes simple, cleansed of over-detail and shaped softly with buttery-like watercolor.

Ambervision is what I call the perfect road photograph. It has sentiment in its story, delicate curved lines - evenly soft and plump, with the quintessential painterly complexion. It will startle when first glanced upon and colors will possess an uncommon arrangement or an absolute match.

                                                                                                                                                   – Paul Hadley, June 2011

Review of the Show Drive-By at the ArtSpace Forum Gallery in Salt Lake City, 2005

Blurred Vision
Photographer Paul Hadley captures an impressionistic American West from behind the wheel

By Jenny Thomas,
Salt Lake Weekly

A perfect day is spent driving and shooting," claims photographer Paul Hadley, his voice crackling over a cell phone connection. "I drive and shoot. There's always a picture within 10 feet of me if I just look for it."
Appropriately enough, Hadley is speaking from the road, somewhere on the freeway between San Diego and Hollywood. Just as appropriately, his premiere Utah showing at Artspace Forum Gallery is titled Drive By. The photographer took most of the show's 70-something shots from behind the wheel, on road trips, out the windows of airplanes and tour buses. He notes, however, that he has not yet been pulled over for the inevitable swerving.
"I spend a lot of time traveling. I love road trips and driving," says the 36-year-old Californian. Although he does call a 1950s cabin near Joshua Tree National Park his home base, he insists, "I don't spend a lot of time in one spot." His tone turns melancholic as he describes the eerily beautiful high desert so often featured in his work.

As he speaks, he is returning from a day at the beach with his girlfriend, but Hadley generally travels and shoots alone. "I'm not really social when I'm shooting," admits the soft-spoken photographer.

This is apparent in his choice of subjects. Long stretches of highways, desolate desert bungalows, taillights disappearing down the road, and flickering neon signs convey a sense of solitude and of the ephemeral. The only human figures in his photographs are distant, faceless, shot from behind and often walking away.
Hadley has developed an impressionistic soft-focus style he calls "ambervision," a term he and a friend originally invented to jokingly refer to "Blue Blocker" sunglasses of late-night infomercial fame. He since has adopted it to describe what in his work he calls the "painting of lights." He gets this whenever he purposely pulls an image out of focus, simplifying a scene to its most basic shapes and colors. His signature blurring has a heightening effect.

"Dropping all the details," explains Hadley, "makes for an interesting story." It also means that, as with Impressionist paintings, the closer you get to his photographs, the less you understand them—the central paradox of Hadley's images.
Although this is Utah's first glimpse of Hadley's work, this isn't Hadley's first glimpse of Utah. Having spent the better part of his youth in Orem, he still visits several times a year, always with camera in tow. A handful of suburban shots—people standing on the side of the road—appear in his show.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of his photographs were taken in the American West. As he captures its spirit through deserted highways and car culture—two of his favorite subjects—the vastness and the isolation shows.

Intrinsic to Hadley's Drive By shooting is motion. That his photographs are shot sometimes at 50 mph makes them feel even more elusive and fleeting. Images are only partially captured, like a dream vaguely remembered but deeply felt. Add to that an eye for catching super-saturated colors and high-contrast moments in time, and a surreal, otherworldly quality results.

For all the beauty in his work, Hadley doesn't use a drop of digital manipulation, a popular tool among today's art photographers. In fact, not one shot of Hadley's work is set up, enhanced, retouched or even cropped. The finished piece uses the very image he saw through the viewfinder. "It gives a much greater feel of what the moment was like," notes Hadley.

The immediacy is palpable. Hadley's photographic world is so real that its blurry elusiveness tugs at your soul.