Giovanni Castro Hayter comes from a background of theatre performers.  A Portuguese national, he was born in Italy in 1983 while his parents were touring with the famous Footsbarn Travelling Theatre Company. He spent his childhood in Brazil, his teenage years in Portugal, and at the age of 19 moved to England to study fine art.  After studying towards a foundation in fine art in Exeter, he later graduated from Brighton University with a BA honours in Fine Art Painting.  He is now based in Arundel where he lives and works.

"These works stress more significance in the actual act of painting rather than what the final creation communicates. The concept behind these works involves a process of releasing and absorbing energies, painting as a form of meditation, searching for a state of harmony within me and my feelings towards the world.

The phenomena of experiencing , feeling, and reacting play a major role in my work. I am interested in the immediacy and spontaneity of this process, so I seek stimulus in nature. I mainly work outdoors where my paintings alight in response to sensorial experiences that I undergo. What I feel, see, touch, listen or smell influences my work. Birds singing, the smells of flowers, the sound of the wind blowing against the trees are occurrences that guide me when I paint, I aim to achieve through my paintings something as similar to nature as possible, where nothing is preconceived.

With an impulsive response the viewer will continue the infinite chain of experiencing, feeling, and reacting."