Jodi Hays' art is an exercise in balance and juxtaposition, the influence of her vibrant abstract paintings shifting between natural landscapes and built environments and her approach alternating between discipline and spontaneity. Filled with vivid pops of color and incorporating grids and iconography, Jodi's work draws inspiration from her upbringing near a national park, her adult years in bigger cities like Boston and Nashville, and an assortment of literature, images, sound bites and titles that move her.
"For years, my work has been a negotiation of restraint and abandon," she says. "Painting is an investment in constraint in a similar way that architecture bends and works within our complex landscapes and cultural matrix."
Using brushes, palette knives and tape, often scraping paint to reveal the layers underneath, Jodi creates textured works that play with shape and space. Her East Nashville studio is filled with arresting canvases of all sizes in various states of completion, and her art is included in collections of the J. Crew Company in New York, Gordon College in Massachusetts, the Nashville International Airport and the Tennessee State Museum.