Featured Artist Amy Hillenbrand

Using oils in a contemporary realist style, artist Amy Hillenbrand captures the grace and beauty of her favorite subject—flowers. See more of this artist’s portfolio and story by visiting her website.

 

 

My journey to painting has been one of healing and ever-unfolding self discovery. I only began painting after a long career as an interior designer in the commercial design world.

 

 

In my previous life, I designed spaces for banks, hospitals, restaurants and big corporations. I used my equally-balanced left brain and right brain in this rigorous career. It was my job to dream up the space and then create all the working architectural drawings that were required to make those conceptual designs into real offices. As the years went on, I found the majority of my time was spent being the administrator of my firm which required me to use left brain most the time. Ugh, not good for a creative person.

 

 

After many years and continuous sixteen hour days, I sold my business. I was at a breaking point; my body, mind and spirit were broken and exhausted. I actually received a message from God to take up oil painting. Oh, how the Lord works in mysterious ways.

 

 

It is so easy to look back now and see there was a master plan to bring me back to health; to heal my body, mind and soul. I have been told many times, by many people, I am on this earth to be a healer. I can see now that first I had to heal myself.

 

 

In the beginning, painting felt like therapy after years of being very stressed. It was fun and allowed me to clear my mind to be present; much like meditation. At this point, I saw painting as a hobby. As time went on, I had recovered from burnout. I was given a new message from the universe—I was to paint for a living.

 

 

I was very excited about this new direction but it brought up new things to heal. I had a very debilitating inner dialogue that I’m not good enough. I kept painting and I also kept working on myself to heal my doubts and fears.

 

 

One very interesting phenomena along the way is the more I healed my inner psyche the better my paintings turned out. People say to me all the time, “I can’t get over how much you have improved in a very short time.”

 

 

The message that I received long ago—that I was a healer—finally makes sense. I mostly paint flowers these days because I was led to that subject. But, I find it very interesting that flowers are given as a gift to help expedite people’s healing.

 

 

As I paint my big flowers, I make specific healing intentions for each painting. Some of the intentions I have infused in my art so far are—unconditional love of self, letting your light truly shine, intense gratitude for health, joy of being in the flow and letting go. It’s exciting to see how people respond to my energy infused pieces.

 

Artist Amy Hillenbrand invites you to follow her on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and her Blog.

 

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