hailey nathel (b. 1996) is a painter who uses interdisciplinary methods and screen-based distractions to her advantage. In 2018, hailey received her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied Painting and Psychological & Brain Sciences. Since then, she has worked as a yoga instructor, a curator and cofounder of artist collective gadget_gurls, an Arts Admissions coach & tutor, and a scenic artist for Showtime, ABC, and Hulu television shows. She is currently based in Northern California and pursuing a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Visual Arts at UC Berkeley Extension.

Seeing the world through a cyberfeminist lens, hailey uses sincerity and humor to explore Mirror [painting / time-based media], Shadow [photography / drawing], and Glitch [digital painting / DIY printing] as visual and conceptual motifs: 

♡ Her participatory painting project, #theMirrorMemoirs  (WIP), uses interpretations of “mirror-selfie” shared on Instagram to create paintings that look at gender roles on and offline, while raising money for Alzheimer’s research.

♡ Through photography and drawing, she’s also been casually exploring shadow as reflection and mirror’s counterpart. And eventually, in her next series of paintings, she plans to use shadow to tackle Facebook—Instagram’s predecessor and #tMM’s prequel.

♡ Her digital series, Seasonal glitches, is an infinite evolution of digitally produced colorful disruptions. By engaging with the intended uses and creative failures inherent in personal technology, hailey leverages mishap as a catalyst for discovery and [re]invention.

While esthetics may vary by medium, her focus remains on looking at the way we see, using the eyes of her embodied and digital-self—as they become one and the same.