‘Looking and drawing is a complex task. Drawing techniques that maintain the eye’s gaze on the subject generates a deeper engagement in the act of looking and drawing. These techniques retrain the body to facilitate a condition of connected looking. In such a condition, the process of observing and drawing becomes integrated to the extent that the distance experienced between the observer and the observed is dissolved. The aim is to develop the human sensing system for a humane art.’ Maria Hayes 2021

Award winning artist Maria Hayes draws and paints movement, story and music as well as the natural world. She loves to collaborate in performance based work with dancers, musicians, storytellers and performers.

Capturing the energy of dancers, rivers, music and landscape, Maria’s approach is to be entirely present with her subject. She aims to fully experience what she is looking at and listening to and to translate that experience onto the page or screen. She uses a visual language honed and developed over years of practice.

In 2020 Maria began a series of walks and paintings in her locality. She walks, performs a painting, posts the image on social media directly they are painted, and walks back. These Pandemic Paintings have generated a following and many have sold.

In 2013 Aberystwyth University awarded Maria a PhD in Fine Art for her research into drawing movement - ‘Learning to Dance on the Page’, which included an exhibition, video installation and the Energy Gift Exchange - a series of inclusive participatory workshop demonstrations. Her post doc paper Cubist Ways of Seeing was presented at two conferences - Cardiff University and at Royal Museums, Greenwich.

Maria Hayes has work in private and public collections, including the National Library of Wales, and is open to commissions and further performance collaborations.