New Franklin-based multimedia artist Amy Dawkins uses her work as a means of connecting with her faith to find meaning and healing. An art reception hosted by Missouri Life will give visitors the chance to connect with Dawkins and her art.
When multimedia artist Amy Dawkins creates, she’s opening a window into her inner self. Missouri Life will host an art reception, co-sponsored by Marshelle Clark, PC, of Weichert Realtors, from 2 – 6 p.m. Saturday, September 28, at Missouri Life Mercantile at 208 Columbia Street in Rocheport. The show will feature a collection of new paintings by Dawkins as well as works by other Missouri artists.
Dawkins, who lives in New Franklin, has been painting for most of her life. As a sixth grader, she started painting postcard scenes on her bedroom wall. A lot of painstaking detail went into this mural, which included a lighthouse on one side, a sailboat on the other, and a menagerie of woodland animals throughout.
That bedroom mural might have offered an escape into a different world, but these days Dawkins uses her work as a means of connecting with her faith to find meaning and healing in this world.
“Something my mom would say is ‘follow your heart,’” Dawkins says. “Sometimes, there are feelings people have and they just don’t know how to handle it, or they handle it wrong. You gotta focus it on God and ask God what He wants. I hope with my work, people will find that understanding that I’ve found.”
After an art instructor at Moberly Area Community College encouraged her to pursue her art more seriously, Dawkins enrolled at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, where she completed a bachelor of fine arts degree.
During this time, Dawkins worked primarily with charcoals, though today she’ll work with anything she can get her hands on. In addition to traditional materials like pastel, watercolor, and oil paint, Dawkins has embraced spray paint and markers. She’ll layer one medium over another, adding water to wash out a color or make it bloom.
“I can just jump right in,” Dawkins says of working with new materials. “I don’t care if it’s just a marker.”
While this multimedia approach reveals a “have faith and take life as it comes” ethos, the subject matter Dawkins portrays reflects various stages in her life.
She started painting pet portraits around the same time she started driving for UPS. As she forged connections with the folks on her route,
“I started getting a lot of commissions, and that turned into commissions for other things like kids and people’s cabins in the woods,” Dawkins says.
She also paints large-scale abstract works that show a textural richness and intense color saturation. Her goal with these works is to bring light and hope to viewers.
And then there are her landscapes and florals, which show an element of fluidity and flow. It’s sometimes reminiscent of the work of Impressionists like Mary Cassatt or Claude Monet, though with a decidedly Midwestern sensibility. To see her landscapes or floral works is to feel a sense of déjà vu—you’ve definitely visited this place before.
Perhaps that’s why her work resonates so strongly with passersby. Currently, Dawkins works the late shift as a scale attendant at Boone Quarries. She makes coffee and spends her downtime working on landscapes depicting cornfields and hay bales. Recently a driver noticed a landscape she was working on. He had to have it, he told her. Another asked her to paint something special for his wife.
While Dawkins’ work gives others a chance to see the world through her eyes, it’s worth noting the unique views the world gives her. Recently while snapping photos of hay fields and silos to reference in future works, she chanced to meet a farmer who offered to take her in his combine during the harvest so she could see the fields from a different perspective.
And maybe it’s that sense of connection—of give and take—that makes Dawkins’ work so powerful.
All photos courtesy of Amy Dawkins.
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