Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Hoskins.
Amy, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I am a visual artist and writer creating with disabilities from my home studio in Nashville.
I grew up in Georgia. I was born in 1964. I experienced a lot of trauma growing up that affects me to this day. I have art therapy, gardening, and I teach a garden class one day a week to K-4th grade after school students. I cherish and love my loved ones.
It’s taken a long time to feel like I know what healthy means. Turning 62 this October, I feel I have now reached a place of both more self reflection, and more deeply understanding how to love.
I started writing poetry briefly in fourth grade, then wrote one again my high school year (1981-82), at the encouragement of a teacher. I was published in the local junior college literary magazine that same year.
In 1987, I graduated from Agnes Scott College with a B.A. in Spanish. I had learned so much about the world, I was a changed person, but still a writer, even more so. The college literary magazine had also published a few of my poems.
Flash forward to 2026, I go to in-person and online poetry mics a few times a month, when I’m able. I enjoy performing now, but about a decade ago, I would shake nervously, and get tongue-tied. These days after a spot on the open mic, I feel released, having expressed myself. I don’t always like my performances, but I’ve done my best on a given night.
I started painting in watercolor in 1993. I began with acrylic paint in the early years of the 2000s. I also experimented with soft and oil pastel for a few years. I’ve painted abstracts, jungles, landscapes, and industrials, after my industrial photography.
I started taking photographs in 1982, and I dabbled for decades, until I found an amazing industrial machine shop here in Nashville in 2001. The series began that year, and until 2018, when I decided to focus on painting some of the photographs I liked best.
All of my writing, my visual art, gardening, and learning about love still, are art therapy and healing to me.
For more about my healing journey, visual art, and writing :: visit amyhoskins.com.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not been an easy journey. I’ve made so many mistakes over the decades, as well as making some good ones. Like I said, it has taken a long time to understand what healthy means. I don’t think you suddenly find out, and I think we have to grow into health our whole lives.
I have so many chronic mental and physical health conditions, that it has taken a lot of specialized child trauma therapy, as well as medications management, for me to understand how to manage it all. Coping every day is a serious thing. I can’t say enough about how counseling and medication have helped me. My physical health care team provides so much amazing care, too. I’m very grateful.
I know myself and the effects of trauma better now. I focus on how I can have compassion with my feelings, and accept them, I’ve been practicing self reflection, living with empathy, and meditation for many years. It helps me so much every day.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
First off, you can find examples of my visual art and writing on my website, and YouTube channel. I also have some fun new mini YouTube videos with different photography subjects of mine over the years.
You might like to go there and see what you think, before reading my description of my creativity below. I say that because of how subjective all art and writing is. For example, you form your impressions of the artwork, and in response, come back to the article. Then it’s more of a discussion of sorts between your perspective and mine.
amyhoskins.com
https://www.youtube.com/@amyhoskins6537/videos
I’ve loved and been inspired by Nature since I was a little girl. That love for Nature has never stopped. My first photos and paintings were of Nature.
Nature is the best artist in my opinion. I especially love painting jungles. Right now I’m painting a landscape of the Etowah River, in a spot where I used to enjoy sitting growing up on my father’s family farm. It’s super intense, but a really good process.
Decades later, I practiced until I eventually liked my artwork better. Not many have been artworks I’ve wanted to bring forward. Now I curate the work toward submissions to a gallery or contest.
I’m in great awe of my contemporary and historical artists and writers. I get overwhelmed in a few paragraphs, a few pages, when I really love what I’m reading. It’s lovely but time-consuming, to finish a book.
I will go to an art gallery or see a fellow artist’s work and walk away, inspired and ready to try my hand again. It is definitely a global salon to me, how we can share our work, and have those local and international discussions.
I try to focus on what I do best, now that I’ve been creating for a long time. I choose a palette for an abstract painting, see an abstract or Natural image to photograph, or a subject I want to explore in any medium.
I used to create much more quickly. Now I take my time. A painting, a poem, a photograph can be a puzzle to me most of the time, and it’s fascinating to discover what will happen with the original inspiration. I step back. I get up close. I take a break and come back to see it in a fresh way.
I am not a competitive creator. I don’t think of a fellow artist’s work of any generation and compare. The only way would be to have it be more like that invisible and visible (now) world of salons. Discussions. I love that so much.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
Every city has its charms, and its car damaging potholes. Every city has so much on its plate to manage. We hope for the best, and it’s not always what we want or need.
I think Nashville gets it right if you’re talking old school, pre massive surge of new folks. Don’t get me wrong, it’s just that I was living here from 1995-2001, and I’ve been back in Nashville since 2015. There was so much going on creatively here when I moved away, and so much more when I moved back.
I feel like a lot of us who have lived here longer, and I still consider myself a newcomer, are frustrated with how the city has gotten so expensive that many creatives who’ve supported the city so well, can’t afford to live here anymore. People move farther and farther out, and maybe away.
Housing is a huge issue.
Also, I barely recognize some parts of the city.
If I like the new places, I still have mixed feelings about them, because I remember what used to be there, it’s like entering a newly imagined world, and in a way it is for a block or so. But it’s surreal, you know?
In a bad way it’s like a never ending construction or traffic zone, so much so that I often don’t recognize my surroundings in a city I’ve lived in for years.
I’m not sure what the answer is for all the issues, but small businesses and creatives who helped build the city need an equal voice at the table.
Every city has its strengths and weaknesses. The best managed ones see both and are able to lead toward progress. Maybe that’s naive, but surely there are more ways to make Nashville less frustrating and more affordable for everyone.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://amyhoskins.com
- Instagram: amyhoskinscc
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@amyhoskins6537/videos
