[4] During the time in which she grew up, children were expected to remain out of the way of adults; without siblings, Hood was often left on her own.
"[6] In high school, an art teacher submitted her work to a competition and she won a National Scholastic Scholarship.
[9] She did not feel that her formal education was sufficient for her development as an artist other than providing her with an introduction to great art and other students.
[6] She immediately fell in love with the country and its intellectual climate and aesthetic,[4] and ended up spending twenty years in Mexico (1941-1961).
They adopted her into their circle, and Hood, for the first time, developed the types of friendships she had longed for as a child.
[3] Her friends and acquaintances at the time included novelist Ramon Sender, playwright Sophie Treadwell, and painters Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington.
[10] She also associated with writer Luis Buñuel and artists Miguel Covarrubias, Rufino Tamayo, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo.
[1][6] This exhibition reflected the influence Mexico had on her art and featured oil and gouache paintings of animals, children, and portraits.
John McAndrews, the curator of architecture at the Museum of Modern Art and a friend of Hood's, showed one of her drawings to Soby.
"[1][12] Her work was a historical link between Mexican synthetic surrealism and the American Color Field School.
[13] Her art also references her Texan roots with expansive imagery and sweeps of color indicative of the southwest.
[7] Gorky, Brancusi, Ensor, Matisse, and Rendon, along with studies of science, nature, myths, and spirituality have all been referenced by Hood as influences.
[16] Throughout the 1950s, Hood's art evolved from its realist and surrealist roots into modern, abstract patterns of color.
[19] Hood focused her teaching efforts on meeting the needs of her students, something she felt was lacking from her formal art education.
[4] In 1975, Hood was tasked with creating the sets for "Allen's Landing" for the bicentennial celebration of the Houston Ballet.
[24] Hood also expressed that she felt that narrative paintings, in their adherence to time frames, miss the essence of the subject.
[24] In the same piece, she praised Mark Rothko and Georgia O'Keeffe amongst others as they "bravely crossed invisible frontiers that have seldom been spoken of among formalists.
[20] In 1985, an award-winning documentary about her work, The Color of Life, was produced by Carolyn Farb, who was a longtime friend and supporter of Hood.
[6][25] That same year, Hood's work traveled to Kenya where it was shown at the UN Focus International Exhibition.
[20] Hood's mature technique consists of poured paint in contrast with sharp, geometric figures.
Her drawings were thought to "reflect profound intimacy of [Hood's] spiritual and emotional growth over 30 years.
"[29] Linear elements and organic symbols were employed in Hood's drawings to create multidimensional space.
From 1941 to 1948, Hood's drawings mostly featured self portraits with an imaginative element, her family, children, and animals.
[29] The influence of both José Clemente Orozco and Edvard Munch can be seen in the linear figure groupings of her drawings from this period.
From 1949 to 1960, Hood's drawings included more nature, depicting plants and animals, and became increasingly abstract with complex spatial arrangements.
[30] Much like Hood's drawings featured a multidimensional spatial framework,[29] Her collages employed unique depictions of space and dimensions.
[30] Using stationery, book and magazine illustrations, her paintings, maps, wrapping paper, and newspaper, Hood explored the mind and human psyche by delineating reality and illusion in her collages.
[30] In 2015, Texas A&M curated an exhibit intended to be the first in-depth overview of Hood's art and life.
[34] Many of her papers, including eight scrapbooks and numerous documents of her career, are also on microfilm at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.
[6] Maidana deeply enriched Hood's knowledge of Native and Latin American cultures through travel.