Hayden Wilson is a Charleston-based photorealistic oil painter whose work primarily focuses on natural subjects like landscapes and wildlife; her award-winning paintings have been represented in shows across the country, and she is a Signature Member of the American Women Artists Association and an Associate Member of the National Oil and Acrylic Painters' Society.

Her recent works are divided into series like landscapes, "A Closer Look," and wildlife: each allows her the opportunity to push her various strengths and sensibilities. "A Closer Look" explores the combination of technology and craftsmanship by translating photos of small-scale natural occurrences that, when magnified, transform into abstract and hypnotic compositions. Likewise, her wildlife paintings enhance the color, lines, and forms of an animal into a work that demands admiration for its natural beauty while suggesting exciting areas of unnatural color that spark a new sense of tangibility. But in our daily and dark indoors and where unnatural colors most naturally occur, she finds just as much excitement in reproducing the mass-produced: the bar scenes, the labels, the shelves, and the stocked. The glowing flames and neon lights that trigger our senses and create noise (aka: the antithesis of the natural) can be found in her Bar Shelves series or First World Choices.

"My style of photorealism and hyperrealism are where my memories and experiences converge with craftsmanship, technology and choice while joyfully pushing the boundaries between realism and expressionism. I paint with sincere reverence and love of our environments and experiences as the beautiful gifts we all share: how truly fortunate we are to access both art and nature so freely, and the joy to make human connections within them. My hope is that my paintings provide an opportunity to question our perception of space and color, to contemplate the concept of creation- whether artistically or divinely- and appreciate the structures, forms, and fine details within the natural and superficial world, and to compare the idea of the authentic versus the artificial; the manufactured versus the organic.

When I am creating, I often think “this is my favorite thing to paint,” but the sentiment is true: I paint what I love, and I find something new and informative in the process in hopes that viewers will too."