New Earth
Series of 31 paintings · 2017–2025 · Completed
Every shape in these paintings is the shape of newly exposed ground near glaciers — land permanently covered by glaciers until the climate uncovered it.
This new earth is like a wound. When a wound occurs, the body instantly begins its healing. These wound-shapes create difficult beauty that invites mourning, critical awareness, and renewed forms of healing and care.
Whenever possible, each painting's pigments are sourced from the places represented in the painting — stones, bones, and plants, plus water from glaciers, rivers, and lakes. The materials I use are themselves bearers of meaning; they don't just symbolize the earth's memory — they are that memory. I intentionally mix these natural pigments with synthetic pigments, exploring our post-natural present.
These abstract maps are drawn from NASA satellite imagery and scientific data, but their purpose is not to re-present familiar climate facts — it is to make space for the emotional, psychological, and spiritual weight of those facts: the grief, fear, wonder, and rage that climate chaos elicits. These paintings led directly to Memory of a Larger Mind.
Medium
Natural and synthetic pigments, rainwater, glacial melt, and river water on paper
Collections
The City of Portland, Oregon
Whitworth University (Spokane, WA)
North Star Civic Foundation (Portland, OR)
Selected Exhibitions
"Transformation / Reclamation" The Art Center, Corvallis, OR (two-person with Lee Running, 2024)
"CHORUS" Round Weather Gallery, Oakland, CA (solo, 2023)
"The Glacier is a Being" Ahoi Gallery, Luzerne, Switzerland (two-person with Julian Stettler, 2023)
"Wild Pigment Project" University Art Museum, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM (2022)
"The Works 2" Round Weather Gallery, Oakland, CA (2022)
"Living Laboratory of Art & Ecology" Terrain Gallery, Spokane, WA (2022)
"Deep Looking" Saranac Art Project, Spokane, WA (2022)
"Sitka Art Invitational" Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR (2022)
"the shimmer" Astoria Visual Arts, Astoria, OR (two-person with Tia Factor, 2021)
"Edge and Mirror: Landscape in the Anthropocene" Center for the Visual Arts, Boise State University (2019)
"Vanishing Point" Vernissage Fine Art, Portland, OR (three-person with Camille Seaman and Nina Elder, 2018)
"Creative Climate Awards Show" Human Impacts Institute, New York City, NY (2018)
Selected Press
Los Angeles Times, front page →
Oregon Public Broadcasting, Art Beat artist profile (2022) →
"Daniela Naomi Molnar," Oregon Encyclopedia →
Featured Artist, Sixth Oregon Climate Assessment, Oregon State University (2023)
Buckman Journal: Broad Spectrum, paintings and poems (Summer 2023)
Climate Change and Happiness podcast →
"Mourning climate loss" by Jennifer Atkinson, CSPA Quarterly (Spring 2021)
"Understanding our relationship with mutations, kin and hybrid bodies" Chatter Marks Podcast, Anchorage Museum (May 2021)
"Climate Grief and Embracing Beautiful Confusion: Daniela Molnar Interviewed" Variable West (November 2020)
"You Aren't Alone In Grieving The Climate Crisis" Science Friday (April 2020)