Amy Howell has been in love with photography since childhood, snapping pictures with a variety of  cameras, inspired by Life Magazine and National Geographic. Though she has a bachelor's degree in graphic design, she was drawn more to oil painting and photography. Over the last several years she began experimenting with other types of materials in her work, utilizing different papers, pieces of plastic, organic matter such as seagrass, torn photographs, pastels and oil crayons. Amy works primarily with acrylic paint, using modeling paste and ceramic tile adhesive to build an underlayer on her canvas or board, giving texture to the paint as it is applied. She feels acrylic paint is most forgiving and versatile as it can be thinned down like watercolor, applied thickly for texture and dries quickly to paint over. She applies color with palette knives, smudging, scraping, rubbing, and then layering with more paint.

As an emerging artist, Amy creates art in her spare time as often as time permits. She works full-time at the Community Health Center of Pinellas as part of a team to help children with trauma and behavioral health issues as well as providing families with needed resources.  Prior to working in healthcare, Amy was a career chef and baker. 

She is inspired by abstract expressionists and thrives on their freedom of color, composition and pushing limits of possibility. She is pulled by the energy of current events which often influences the piece she is working on. Amy also wants to bring the feeling of energy going forward from self reflection and the beauty that is happening within. Improvising, she lets things happen intuitively, letting the piece transform, like putting together a puzzle. 

Amy moved to Gulfport in January 2019 from Provincetown, Massachusetts, drawn to its diverse community and its abundance of culture. Her goal for the near future is to become a full time working artist. The St. Petersburg community offers artists many opportunities to promote their art in a variety of venues such as  art walks, art festivals, home studio tours, art alliances, galleries and online shows. 

Amy was recently awarded honorable mention in the Come Out St. Pete show at the Woodfield Fine Arts Gallery and has been accepted to the juried Gulfport Art Walk. She would like to promote future Gulfport Art Walks where she will be a regular exhibitor. Please visit Amy’s website at www.howellmarks.art. She is currently exploring other websites to promote her art.