Artist Biography:

Mary Hayes is a printmaker/painter living in Nottingham. Her studio is at Leicester Print Workshop (LPW). Her interest is colour through light with reflections and distortions. Mary printed in school with children as a teacher. Mary learned etching at Tisbury in Wiltshire and subsequently joined LPW, later studying for a degree in Contemporary Fine Art at Nottingham University. Her final degree show used lighting as pure colour. Mary has learned the principles of most types of printing, but particularly enjoys etching and solar plate. She recently learned about disperse dyes on fabric. This method produces stunningly bright colours.

Art Practice:

It is not appropriate for me to use the studio in Leicester so my time has focused on my garden.

There are some forms of printing that I can do at home, but I have taken this opportunity to paint. Everything about life has become smaller – so my art focus has also become smaller. I have been interested in colour in my garden, and using a microscope to look at it. This has produced some images that are almost abstract, so my development now is in trying to focus on pure colour.