My Personal Artist Story — Amy Lynn Hess

Ability, supplies, time & space, productivity & Practice

“Blue Heron,” acrylic on board painted by the author, Amy Lynn Hess

On ability: A fluke, an accident, inspired by a muse that’s fleeting

I have always felt like my best works were accidents. Maybe not the picture book I made when I was 8, but definitely the illustrations I drew for a book I called The Eggplant Monster, and maybe not the characters I doodled all the way through high school, but maybe the painting of my horse I made one summer in a 4-H workshop.

Maybe not the penguin sculpture from intermediate school, or the bust reminiscent of Mrs. Butterworth, or the little dragons I made out of Crayola’s Model Magic and submitted to an Enesco competition, but maybe the surrealist bronze I made in undergrad and the porcelain flutes and bells I made in the pottery studio decades later.

Sometimes my work was great, and sometimes it was awful. I’ve always thought of my best works as accidents, somehow inspired by a fleeting, fickle muse that leaves me and my next work a muddy mess.

A collection of works by the author, Amy Lynn Hess

On art supplies: To be hoarded from…