Daniela Naomi Molnar is a poet, artist, and writer who creates with color, water, language, and place. 

Her large-scale abstract paintings are created with pigments she has made from plants, bones, stones, rainwater and glacial melt. Sourced from specific biomes she has visited, these paints become palettes of place with which she investigates site-specific relationships of place and time, with a focus on the earth's capacity for both memory and resilience.

 

Her poems and essays are created alongside the pigments and paintings; the practices overlap and influence each other to create new ecologies—paintings, books, poems, essays, exhibits, and installations.

 

Molnar’s training in both science and art informs her practice. She previously worked as an Art Director with Scientific American and later founded and directed the Art + Ecology program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, as well as helping found and direct the backcountry artist residency Signal Fire.

 

The subject of a front-page feature in the Los Angeles Times, a PBS Oregon Art Beat profile, an entry in the Oregon Encyclopedia, and a feature in Poetry Daily, her artwork has been shown internationally and published widely. It is in public and private collections internationally and has been recognized by numerous grants, fellowships, and residencies.

 

Her debut book CHORUS  won the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Poetry and was selected by Kazim Ali as the winner of Omnidawn Press’ 1st/2nd Book Award. Her book-length poem “Memory of a Larger Mind” accompanies photographs by Julian Stettler in The Glacier is a Being (Sturm & Drang, 2023). Her work is anthologized in the forthcoming second volume of The Ecopoetry Anthology and in Breaking the Glass: A Contemporary Jewish Poetry Anthology by The Laurel Review.  Her upcoming books include: 

PROTOCOLS (Ayin Press, 2025) and Light / Remains (Bored Wolves Press, 2026).