Dorothy Hood (1918–2000) determinedly forged her path against the backdrop of momentous changes in the American art scene including the advent of the first truly American art movement, Abstract Expressionism, and its outgrowths of Pop Art, Minimalism, Color Field Painting, and Conceptual Art. Hood’s art does not fit easily into any of these movements but instead provides a bridge between several styles.

She came of age at the advent of World War II, when European creatives fled to the Americas, and she had the opportunity to meet many influential artists. As a young artist, she dabbled in the prevailing styles of the day, flirting with Surrealism and abstraction. Maturing as an artist, Hood found her style— a blend of abstraction, and realism in collages, drawings, and paintings. 

Hood demonstrated an aptitude for art from an early age. Encouraged by her family, she single-mindedly focused on becoming an artist. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, she moved to Mexico, where she spent nearly twenty years. This was a foundational period both intellectually and for her artistic development. While in Mexico, Hood met many artists who ignited her passion and introduced her to new ideas. Early influences include two strong women artists, Leonora Carrington (British, 1917–2011) and Remedios Varo (1908–1963). Hood also found a mentor in Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco (1883–1949) and met her husband, Bolivian composer José Maria Velasco Maidana. She also found inspiration in the people and landscape of Mexico itself.

While in Mexico, Hood moved frequently and had scant financial resources.  As a result, drawing became her main outlet. She explained, “How I felt poverty was in my relationship to materials. I complained about this to Orozco. He said it didn’t matter—work on paper sacks. Well, it did matter. It distanced me from the Object, as though I hadn’t grasped the product in its entirety. The only thing was to draw. With so much mobility, moving large paintings would have been impossible. Thus, as a result of poverty, my drawings excelled, and my painting lagged behind for many years.”*  Her first exhibition in Mexico in 1943 at the Galería de Arte María Asúnsolo (GAMA), Mexico City featuring drawings drew critical acclaim. Her drawings continued to receive support from collectors and museum curators in the United States. Of the drawings, Hood shared, “People have thought my drawings to be fantasies. They are not; they tumble out; they have to do with the extremes of life and treat things that people in the rush of living can effortlessly identify with—passions, cries, movements, nature, and even predated space exploration, which is a kind of motion and time, just extended.”

Although Hood experienced success during her period in Mexico, it was only after she returned to her home state of Texas in 1962, that she began to blossom, her art matured, and her career soared. With solid achievements in Mexico and New York, Hood established herself as a seasoned artist upon her arrival in Houston. While she entered a burgeoning arts scene with many museums and galleries, she was one of only a few women in a province of male artists. Hood described the Houston art community as a “boys club;” and it was a club that she felt isolated from. Set apart from the art community, provided Hood with the freedom to follow her own path. She continued drawing, but her paintings took center stage. Growing into a muscular scale, Hood’s abstractions allude to various themes including nature, inner worlds, outer space, and other cultures. Hood dedicated her time in the studio to fervent technological experiments, using chemistry in search of an almost alchemic result. This pursuit of meaning and understanding through materials gave way to a technical mastery of painting, which provides another lens to explore Hood’s art.  In the 1980s, Hood also turned to collage—a medium where she could explore her ideas more spontaneously and whimsically.

Looking at the body of Hood’s art and exploring her archives provides a unique glimpse into Hood’s journey of self-discovery. It reveals a complex woman, who unfailingly believed in herself as an artist. She was a relentless self-promoter and found many opportunities to share her work. Her artistic output, journal writings, poetry, and unpublished autobiography Multiple Mirrors reveal Hood as adventurous, self-reflective, and deeply interested in truly knowing herself. Yet, for all her strengths, Hood often struggled to define her identity, and she earnestly sought to distinguish herself through her encounters with people, the places she traveled, and a willingness to deeply explore her psyche.

Hood believed there are inherent connections between the inner psyche, spirituality, outer space, and the natural world. These are the defining themes in her prolific output of paintings, drawings, and collages.  As a whole, Hood’s work is hard to categorize. It does not align neatly with the Abstract Expressionist movement alongside such artists as Elaine de Kooning (American 1918–1989), Joan Mitchell (American, 1925–1992), or Helen Frankenthaler (American, 1928–2011).  While there are some similarities, Hood’s approach differs from the nonrepresentational emotive gestural marks these women employed and instead, she formed abstractions that embody representational illusions.

A rediscovery and reevaluation of Hood’s work occurred with the opening of her archives, the scholarly research completed by Susie Kalil and others, and the Art Museum of South Texas’s 2016 large-scale retrospective. Hood left a legacy of her art and words and through the path she blazed as a woman artist who influenced future generations of artists. From her early anti-war drawings, wherein she utilized expressive lines to convey the pain and alienation felt by her peers and friends who escaped the Spanish Civil War to her large-scale paintings filled with bold forms and sweeps of color, Hood portrayed her inner emotions.  Her works portray the undeniable honesty of someone earnestly seeking answers within herself and the world around her.

*Unless otherwise noted all quotes on this website are from Dorothy Hood’s correspondence and notes found within the Dorothy Hood archives.