Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Ashlyn.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My story began in the shadows of childhood abuse. Because of the abuse, I became a product of the state, lost in the system, shuffled from one unfamiliar place to another, like a puzzle piece that never quite fit. The perpetual smiler I’m known as today was something I taught myself while in foster care—a survival skill born from chaos. I believed that maybe people would want to keep the little girl who softly smiled. My smile, worn like armor, hid secrets of abuse, a deep ache for safety, and a love that didn’t come with conditions or goodbyes. I felt invisible, like a shadow trailing behind a world that never turned around to see me.
I wasn’t a child who dreamed of becoming an artist. I dreamed of finding a home, a place filled with love instead of fear, where I belonged, and not just trying to survive. I carried my entire life in a black trash bag through a revolving door of foster homes, each one a reminder of how disposable I felt.
My case number was the only constant in a world that kept changing. I had it memorized like a name, one I never chose but followed me everywhere. It became my identity, stamped into every folder, and mentioned in every new school enrollment. Hearing that number so often felt like I was no longer a child. It was as if the system had erased my name, my voice, reducing me to ink on paper, while the rest of me quietly disappeared.
However, even in the darkest moments, there was this quiet voice buried deep inside me. It didn’t yell or demand. It simply whispered, “You matter”. Even though nothing in my life reflected those words, I clung to them; they were all I had.
Much later in my adult life, Nature became my refuge and my teacher. It was the one place where I could breathe, where nothing was expected of me. I began to notice how the wildest beauty often followed the fiercest storms. How even fallen trees made room for sunlight and new life. It was through those quiet, sacred moments outside, surrounded by things that weren’t trying to fix me, just let me be, that I started to feel the possibility of healing. To this day, nature is at the heart of almost everything I paint. It reminds me that growth isn’t always pretty, but it’s always powerful.
Art came into my life during one of those low points, when depression was loud and hope felt like a faraway dream. I had read that painting could be calming, so I picked up a large, tedious paint-by-numbers kit. It was an act of desperation; I could no longer afford therapy, and I was willing to try anything.
What I didn’t expect was to fall in love with the quiet rhythm of the brush in my hand, the way it moved like it already knew what I needed. I stopped following the rules almost immediately, coloring outside the lines as if I were rewriting my own story. Time seemed to slow, softening around me. I felt present. Like I had stumbled into a part of myself that had been waiting to be found. When I finished, I stepped back and stared at what I had created: bright flowers blooming across half a woman’s face, rising from the silence of a once blank canvas. Something shifted in me, something I still can’t quite explain.
My entire being told me that I had to keep painting, this time without numbers and rules. I purchased the most affordable supplies I could find. For months, I stared at a blank canvas, too scared to begin, no clue how to start. When I finally did, I made something that looked like it was created by a preschooler in desperate need of a nap. I laugh about it now, but that piece, messy and unrefined, was a beginning. It was the first step toward something I didn’t know I was building.
Art began as something I did in solitude. A place where I could breathe when the world felt too tight. As I painted, I would catch myself smiling in a way I had never smiled before, and it wasn’t forced. I felt as if it were coming from a place I had not yet visited. Yet still, I never imagined anyone else would care to notice my work or even like it enough to give it a second glance. I certainly never called myself an artist. But then someone did notice it. An art director by the name of Greg Loisi. He believed in what I was creating long before I believed in it myself. He urged me to stop hiding, to have the confidence to share my art with the world. I resisted for months, and I pushed back hard. I didn’t understand what he saw. Art had become my way to survive. It was personal, something I clung to as a coping mechanism. I never thought it could live beyond my hands, let alone be something someone would want. But Greg kept encouraging me. Patiently. Steadily. Until one day, I held my breath and thought, why not? Just try.
And then, someone bought a painting, and another sold, and another. People were telling me how they connected with my art, how it made them feel something. I still struggle to put that feeling into words, how I feel it every single time I rehome one of my paintings. To know that something born from my pain and healing, something that holds the rawest parts of my soul, now lives on someone else’s wall, is unexplainable. I began to think that maybe I wasn’t a puzzle piece that never fit in, but in fact, I was an essential piece of a puzzle, waiting to be built.
For me, art was no longer about healing; it was a language. A way to speak when words refused to come. It became more than a passion. I began to see art everywhere I looked, even while my eyes were closed. I found a path within it, a way to connect, to share, to build something entirely new from what had once been broken. For the first time, I began to believe in myself. To believe that maybe I wasn’t just drifting through a world I didn’t belong in. Maybe my pain had a purpose. That I didn’t have to keep surviving, I could start living. Fully. Honestly. Beautifully.
Throughout my life, I’ve carried the ache of rejection and the feeling that I was hard to love, yet easy to forget. But nature didn’t flinch at my silence, it didn’t turn away from my sadness or ask me to be anything more than what I was. In the stillness of trees and the hush between the wind, I felt a softness take root inside me. Nature created a place I wasn’t told to leave, a sacred space within me where grief could exhale. There, in that quiet sanctuary, an artist was born, not all at once, but slowly. Nature and art will always be entwined in my story, because it was in the arms of one that I found the courage to become the other.
Today, my smile is genuine. I no longer hide from the trauma I found impossible to outrun. Instead, I face it, honor it, and let it shape me, not define me. I refuse to let my suffering be in vain. What once broke me now builds connections. And now, instead of a trash bag full of secondhand clothing and trauma, I carry the weight of my past as a tool through compassion, empathy, and wisdom to help others navigate their way, just as I did.
I am not a case number. I have a name. I am an abstract artist, a storyteller. I don’t just paint, I translate the unspeakable. Silence turned to texture—grief, to color. In the layers of boldness and bloom, the girl I was and the woman I am stand side by side. My past no longer holds the brush. It hangs on my canvases now. Free, unashamed, and brave. And finally, so do I.
After showing my work in a few galleries and selling multiple pieces, something truly surreal happened. After some time, the very art director who first believed in me, long before I called myself an artist, invited me to have my own solo exhibition at the HACPAC gallery in Hackensack, New Jersey, just outside of New York City.
My show, “Roots of Light,” will run from October 3rd to November 11th, 2025. “Roots of Light” will not only be an exhibition to showcase my art but also a platform for me to advocate for Mental Health Awareness. And for the first time, the little girl in me finally understands the whisper I clung to for so long. I matter. Only now, I firmly believe it.
I would be honored if you could attend and share my exhibition link. I would be happy to answer any questions, discuss what led me here today, and show you the work that has evolved from it. This exhibition is just one small chapter in a very long, unfinished book. One, I am still writing, page by page, with every brushstroke.
For more information about the show, visit: https://hacpac.org/events/roots-of-light-gallery-reception-exhibit/
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
My road has never been smooth.
I’ve faced financial burdens that made even the most basic art supplies feel out of reach. I’ve wrestled with self-doubt, the consistent feeling of not knowing where to begin, and the frustration of lacking the knowledge I needed to become the artist I yearned to be. I’ve had no studio, no mentors, no resources: just a stubborn will and a longing to create. There were days when I burned to paint, but I couldn’t afford a canvas. Times when harsh criticism made me question if I belonged in a world already brimming with talent. My tools were whatever I could scavenge, including scraps from thrift stores, secondhand canvases, and Dollar Tree brushes, which I held together with duct tape once they began to fall apart. Most of the time, I didn’t know what I was doing. But I painted anyway.
I painted over my own work countless times, some of which I really liked, just to have a surface to create on again. It never got easier. But I did it anyway, because the need to express myself outweighed the heartbreak of letting those pieces go.
I started with no confidence, barely any supporters, and a voice so quiet I wasn’t sure it could carry. Building a name for myself while trying to sell enough work to afford another canvas has been, at times, what felt like an impossible endeavor. Every tube of paint came with a sacrifice. But I kept going. I still do because I believe in the purpose behind my work.
With cracked hands, a relentless spirit, and a paintbrush. I continue to build something.
There’s still so much I don’t know. I’m sure I could benefit from real classes, better brushes, and supplies that don’t fall apart mid-stroke. But I do know this: Art gave me a voice when I didn’t have one, and now I create, not just to be seen, but so others might finally feel seen too.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m an autodidact abstract artist who found my voice in texture and emotion. I’ve always been drawn to the abstract because it gives me the freedom to express what words sometimes can’t. Early on, I began experimenting with joint compound as a way to create depth and dimension on canvas, not only because I loved the effect but because it was a more affordable way to bring texture into my work. What began with basic acrylics slowly evolved into my own sculptural style, one in which the canvas feels alive with movement and emotion. Over time, I’ve explored new mediums and techniques, but that raw, three-dimensional texture has remained at the core of what I do. My work often blurs the line between painting and sculpture. Each piece tells a story through its layers, color, and ridges.
As a self-taught artist, I had no rulebook to follow, so I created my own. I developed a style that reflects who I am, not what the art world expects me to be. Although my style isn’t for everyone, I’m proud of that. I never set out to blend in. I’ve remained committed to standing out and sending a message, even when it would have been easier to conform. My work carries a voice, bold, imperfect, and deeply personal.
Much of my inspiration comes from nature, with its shapes, colors, and the way light dances on water or moss creeps along forgotten paths. Nature has always been a place of refuge and reflection for me. It shows up in the way I build each painting, in the organic textures and earthy tones I reach for. It mirrors the healing I’ve found there.
I’m known for writing deep, descriptive stories for each piece I create. Every painting carries a storyline, an emotional or mental impression that gives meaning to the texture. Even the names I give my work are intentional. As a child, my own name often felt like a missing piece of me, replaced by a case number in systems that didn’t see me as whole. So now, naming my pieces is a deeply personal act. Each title holds meaning, sometimes a memory, a message; it’s the first whisper of the story each painting tells.
My work is a piece of me, my own story shared with the world, layer by layer.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Happiness, for me, is layered. It lives in the moments with my now adult children, watching their eyes light up when they laugh. Loving them the way I was never loved has broken a cycle, and that alone feels like a legacy. It’s planning a future with the man I love, without fear of abandonment. Happiness is standing in the same places where I once felt sorrow, now softer, stronger, and transformed. It’s found in the hikes I take, in the tiny wonders I used to pass by without a second glance, with the eyes to see wildflowers growing through concrete. I find myself falling in love every day with something new, something simple I used to overlook.
Happiness is impact, no matter how small. It’s knowing that somewhere, in some quiet corner of the world, someone is better because I existed and chose to care. It’s in the moment I finish a painting, step back, and whisper to myself, “I did that,” disbelief and pride dancing together in my chest. It’s the humbling joy of knowing a stranger loved something I created enough to hang it in their home that fills me with a happiness I never thought I would find. That quiet, sacred exchange between my art and their space is a profound experience.
It’s the truth behind my smile. It’s reliving a childhood I never got to have, through the excitement of hearing my children say “I love you,” or something as small and perfect as a bunny passing through my yard. My childlike wonder was never lost—it was only delayed.
And finally, happiness is the moment I felt a feeling I couldn’t explain, couldn’t understand. It wasn’t wrapped in fear or pain, but in warmth, steady and unfamiliar. It didn’t rush in loud or grand, just quietly settled into the cracks where sorrow used to live. And in that stillness, I realized I wasn’t waiting to be happy anymore. I already was.
Thank you for taking the time to read about my journey.
Amy Ashlyn
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.amyashlynart.com
- Instagram: @amyashlynart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1AHiN426sW/
- Other: https://hacpac.org/events/roots-of-light-gallery-reception-exhibit/
