R. J. T. Haynes

RJT Haynes read German & Philosophy at Oxford in the days when you could still get away with that sort of thing, before moving to a remote cottage in North Cornwall – a ruggedly beautiful part of South-west England whose unique light & landscape have informed many of his paintings.

A keen environmentalist, he worked for Britain’s largest conservation charity, The National Trust, for a number of years on real pick & shovel projects – in some of Cornwall’s most beautiful coastal & woodland areas, and in all weathers – until deciding to devote himself full-time to painting & writing.

His paintings feature in many private collections around the UK and elsewhere.

Christened Richard John Haynes and known as Toby, he grew up the youngest of three in Essex, the son of a sign painter, surrounded from childhood by the smell of paint and turpentine. He has had no formal art training beyond what was taught at grammar school; the eye came from the sign shop, the discipline from philosophy.

He has lived in the same remote cottage outside Launceston since 1978, with sheep and cattle grazing outside the window and, for seventeen of those years, no electricity. He built his own studio, Willow’s Barn, and works there between spells in New York and East Hampton, where he first exhibited in 2011 and has shown regularly since, including at the Parrish Art Museum, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts and the Arts Center at Duck Creek.

Toby is also a poet, with a Best in Show and a joint first prize from the East End Arts Council’s poetry competitions and a reading at the Parrish Art Museum to his name. He is a member of ArtCan, the artist-led UK non-profit.

He still builds as well as paints. With his East Hampton friends Jeanie and the late David Stiles he helped construct the treehouses in their books, and in July 2026 he designed and built the wooden belfry that held the Wavertree ship’s bell on Governors Island, rung to welcome forty tall ships into New York Harbor for America’s 250th anniversary. “It’s funny that an English guy should be making a bell for Independence,” he told The East Hampton Star. “But both the bell and the ship came from England.”

Artist’s statement

My work is uncompromisingly figurative, but varied in stylistic treatment, content, & medium. No picture ever turns out exactly as originally conceived: I am not in control of the process, nor would I want to be. It’s the journey that’s interesting. I will change my technique or the colours on my palette if it starts to feel too familiar & comfortable. The materials & subject have a say in what becomes of them, and painting is always a form of negotiation or collaboration between us.

I’m not so much interested in fleeting impressions as in what’s underneath them: everything we see is full of cultural & personal references, just as words are to a poet; and I want to tap into that — a ‘simple’ lamb or apple is abuzz with symbolism. But images must also ultimately have a life of their own, and make their own connection with the viewer without exegesis, independently of the artist.

“The title Mugshots is a bit mischievous, but there’s a thread of portraiture in all these works: people, animals, or objects and – implicitly – their owners.”

Arts Center at Duck Creek, 2019

“Living without electricity for 17 years made me more attuned to seasons, light, atmosphere.”

Arts Center at Duck Creek, 2019

“The sheep in my field are mythological, but they are also real-life: heavy and muddy creatures.”

Dan’s Papers, 2013

“Poetry is like painting with words, and it has a strong visual element for me.”

The East Hampton Star, 2017

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