It’s not easy to keep feeling inspired when you sometimes spend week after week doing foils, something Hayley Austin, session stylist, Wella educator and bronze winner in the colour category at the International TrendVision Award (Hayley with model pictured below), knows all too well. Here, she tells us why art will always be her muse and reveals the iconic images that have influenced her work so far…
“Being a hair colourist can have its challenges: trying to keep one step ahead of the game, looking for new inspiration and ideas to create something wonderful is a mission in itself. Yes we develop our own style, but to find your niche in the industry – to keep your individuality – is a completely different ball game. No matter how much you play around with colours, when trying to create something new, usually someone out there has already beaten you to it.
“I started turning to art for inspiration when I entered Wella Professionals Trend Vision Award in 2016. I started my career as an artist, studying Fine Art at Liverpool University, so I connected the two very easily. Rather than looking for just colour inspiration, I was more interested in the different textures, movement and the composition of paintings.
“For instance, the look I created below, I used Nicole Wermers 2015 Turner Prize installation as inspiration. The fur of the jacket helped me think how I wanted the texture to look in the hair. I wanted to create a feathery-like movement, as if the fur was moving in the cold wind. The colour palette was created based on the cool atmosphere that Nicole Wermer had captured in her installation.
“The next colour look I created that was inspired by art you can see below and I used Pink Floyd’s album cover, The dark side of the moon for my inspiration. According to the artist who created the album artwork, Storm Thorgerson, the concept of this cover was to try and connect with Pink Floyd’s live shows, which he said were famous for their lighting, ambition and madness… hence the prism, the triangle and the pyramids. It’s all connects.
“For this look I used triangle sections exactly like the album cover and used ‘space’-like colours. My aim was to connect the colour and shapes and make it all flow.
“For the next project I’m working on, I am looking into how colour is built up on to canvas and recreating that on hair. I’ll be placing colours on top of each other, layer on layer, like artists do, for example Jackson Pollock’s drip-and-splash style.
“Watch this space to discover how my next masterpiece will turn out!”
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