Black History Month Cape Fear Stories: Ivey Hayes

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Pender County native Ivey Hayes found his gift for art early in life, but developed his incredible talents much later.

After working as a teacher, a soldier, a cop and in a factory, Rheumatoid Arthritis  crippled Hayes.

As the illness gnarled his hands and made it difficult to walk, Hayes turned back to arts as therapy, letting his paintings give him experiences he could not enjoy physically.

“So I’m enjoying in a different sense the experience of being a golfer, being a bird,” Hayes said in 2007.

“It really turned into a love affair like never before, because the Lord began to show me things that I never saw before,” Hayes said in 2007.

But Hayes said he fought God’s plan by painting portraits, until he said the Lord took him on a spiritual experience that changed everything, showing him faceless black figures working and living in what Hayes called distorted perspective.

His iconic paintings sold for thousands of dollars, benefited numerous charities and served as official artwork for several area festivals.

Five years after his death, Hayes’ legacy and gift live on.