Marlana Stoddard Hayes

“From her earliest beginnings, Marlana Stoddard Hayes has been inspired to use elements of nature in her painting practice, but now does so within a contemporary context. Over the years she has developed a cross-fielding system of information input, using elements in her garden as living subjects, along with extensive collections of artifacts and a personal reference library. Her work explores plant and biological forms that are an outgrowth of the inspiration these sources provide.

Long interested in living communities, Stoddard uses images to explore the relationship among various nested systems found in the natural world. Over the past five years, she answered the call to use spore prints from the fungi growing under her trees as a vehicle to embellish the work of her hands. Finding that the pigmentation qualities of the spores could be massaged by timing and temperature, she has refined their use to augment the chemical manipulations she employs in her work.

Trained as a calligrapher in her foundation years, she has always recognized the power and transmissive energy of each human nervous system, and how losing contact with this integral part of our humanity may leave us compromised. It is her personal mission to continue to inspire and teach others that by using simple tools, along with refined powers of mental concentration, they can reach higher levels of performance in everyday tasks.”

BIO FROM: http://marlanastoddardhayes.com/about/