The Arts & Business Council, Blackbird Media, and F&M Bank have teamed up to present the Artist of the Week on The Nashville Sign. This week’s featured artist is Amy Hoskins!
Amy is a multi-disciplinary artist who creates through painting, photography and writing. When she paints, she explores her emotions and experiences, creating imagined natural and abstract landscapes. She uses multiple layers of watercolors to sculpt the shapes into different textures and forms.
“My body of work ranges from sublime cloud and floral themes to intense struggles between darkness and light – to mysterious and frolicking tree forms – across the color spectrum from exquisitely subtle pastels to vibrant and exotic earth tones. When I paint, it is an emotional experience and I get lost in the world of the painting.”
At a young age, Amy garnered creative influences from Matisse and Picasso, and was especially excited by their use of shapes and colors, as well as Matisse’s paper cutting. She was also inspired and intrigued by the subtropical natural world around her growing up in northwest Georgia. There she also witnessed the blight of increasing development, and in college learned of worldwide environmental threats as part of her studies in International Relations. For these reasons, she relates strongly to wild places on the Earth and seeks them out in her paintings and photographs, in the abstract and the representational.
Amy began painting in 1993 without formal training as a way to express herself while suffering from chronic pain. As the physical pain healed, her paintings became a way to explore emotions over the years, both the sublime and excruciating. She credits her friends with encouraging her to continue exploring this artform. Her earlier paintings included studies of clouds, energies and colors in motion. Her more recent paintings are studies of tropical and Natural landscapes, and of energy inspired by the tropics and music.
As she progresses, her studies of Buddhism, creative visualization and meditation deepen her exploration of wonder and fascination, and she seeks a contemplative approach to all of her work as a way of centering, editing, and transforming herself and her art. To learn more about Amy Hoskins and her broad range of work, follow her on Instagram, or visit her website AmyHoskins.com.
Want to be featured on The Nashville Sign? Visual artists working in any medium, who are members* of the Arts & Business Council at the Basic Level ($30 annually) or above, are eligible to apply for Artist of the Week on The Nashville Sign.
*Those unable to become members due to financial barriers can be granted a waiver. Contact us at [email protected] to be confidentially considered for a waiver.