Snowy Cabin Landscapes with artist Hayley Santell

Saturday, December 6
Snowy Cabin Landscapes with artist Hayley Santell
1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
$35 per person

Join us for a cozy winter painting workshop!

Together we’ll create soft, moody, minimalist landscapes featuring snowy cabins and wooded scenes, perfect to frame or give as a holiday gift. The afternoon begins with light pencil sketching as we take inspiration from the beauty of the museum’s historic rooms, then we’ll move to Café at 3218 to sip and paint in a relaxed setting.

Salty snacks will be provided. Festive $5 holiday cranberry mimosas and classic bloody marys will also be available for purchase at Elixir, the soda fountain just downstairs.

Meet the Artist:

Hayley Santell is a Kansas City–based multimedia painter and emerging artist who captures landscapes and elements of nature while immersed in it. She handcrafts her materials directly from the earth—making toxic-free paints from rocks, plants, and minerals like indigo, safflower, beet, etc, and dyeing raw cotton and linen canvases with natural plant dyes before stretching them by hand.

Rooted in stillness, sacred attention, and sustainability, her paintings recall nostalgic moments outdoors—quiet, agenda-free, and unplugged. Her recent work has been described as Monet-esque—blending old-world romanticism with a contemporary abstract lens. Marked by soft edges, hazy tones, and a dreamlike, ephemeral quality, her landscapes feel fleeting, like an old memory or dream held just long enough to remember. Santell invites viewers into a slower, more connected way of being.

Her inspiration and love began as a child, watching her grandmother—a professional china painter and her first teacher—at work. That early spark led her to dual degrees in Fine Arts and Journalism at the University of Missouri, along with semesters studying painting at Florence University of the Arts. Today, her paintings and drawings invite viewers to step into nostalgic, agenda-free moments in nature—quiet pauses away from technology and responsibility.

Santell is also a three-time self-published author, speaker, art teacher, and commission-based artist. She previously spent a decade as founder of the ethical fashion brand MADI Apparel, where she championed living wages and eco-conscious production. Today, those same values echo through her art, offering collectors not just paintings, but reminders of balance, beauty, and stillness in nature. Since January, Santell has been in residence at Hotel Kansas City, and now looks forward to sharing her work as The Chatwal Lodge’s first artist-in-residence this October.

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