After graduating from The Art Institute of Chicago in 1962, Martha Hayden traveled to Europe on a fellowship and continued her studies at the Schule des Sehens in Salzburg, Austria with the renowned Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. For her work there, she was honored with the school’s most prestigious award.

 Afterwards she continued to travel, paint, and study the work in museums throughout Europe, spending time in Austria, Italy, Spain and France before returning to the United States and later traveling to paint in Mexico.

Today Martha divides her painting time between New York City and southern Wisconsin, but also explores new perspectives by traveling and participating in artists’ residencies in other regions. Her most recent U.S. residencies were at the Montana Artists Refuge,  the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, New Mexico, and at I-Park, in East Haddam, CT. In Spring 2004 and 2006 she was invited by the Maryland Institute of Art, College of Design to paint at Chateau Klots, Rochefort-en-terre, Brittany, France. In 2008 she painted at Moncontour in Brittany, and had fellowships at Cill Rialaig, Ballinskellig, Ireland, and at The Museum of the Center of Europe, Vilnius, Lithuania.