Aman­da Hukill says what­ev­er gift she has comes from with­in. It is her ‘God giv­en gift’ to put things on can­vas. Ear­ly on, before any con­tact with style or con­ven­tion­al tech­niques, her expres­sions in the var­i­ous medi­ums of art drew atten­tion to that gift. With no for­mal art train­ing, her style excels in a rich, vibrant expres­sion of the world around us. When she enjoys and deeply con­nects with a pre­sent­ed sub­ject, some­thing inside of her mesh­es with the medi­um and she sim­ply ‘puts her heart on the can­vas’ , open­ing up the world of cre­ation in a way you have nev­er seen before.

Her first mem­o­ry of an expe­ri­ence in the world of art was in the sec­ond grade. Her best friend’s moth­er was an art instruc­tor and she had come to the small town pub­lic school to teach an art class. Chal­lenged by the vis­it­ing artist, Aman­da was encour­aged to select a pho­to and draw it.. She care­ful­ly select­ed a beau­ti­ful wolf as she was cus­tom to nature and loved the out­doors grow­ing up in the coun­try on a small farm in cen­tral Texas. Upon com­plet­ing her sug­gest­ed task, to her sur­prise, the instruc­tor asked to take her draw­ing to the state fair and enter it.. Aman­da would then win her first rib­bon at the state fair. The instruc­tor encour­aged Aman­da and informed her she had a ‘spe­cial gift’ with art. This start­ed a love affair with putting things on canvas.

From that time on, Aman­da began to draw every­thing around her. It was not uncom­mon for her to sit in the farm­yard for hours on end draw­ing the goats, or oth­er ani­mals as they frol­icked, played, and sim­ply rev­eled their true natures. She even entered 6 pieces in the state fair through her local art instruc­tor and was able to secure 6 first place rib­bons. In 2011 Aman­da was pre­sent­ed with a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty. Hav­ing stud­ied genet­ics for many years on long tail fowl, she was approached by anoth­er breed­er who had heard she could draw. He asked her if she could do a paint­ing for him of a prospect­ed breed. This is a breed that isn’t set yet but is in the breed­ing process of being devel­oped. There was a well known artist who had done many of these paint­ings but was too busy at the time so Aman­da rose to the occa­sion. Upon com­ple­tion of the task at hand she sub­mit­ted the paint­ing to the fel­low breed­er. To his delight, It was bet­ter than the renown artist’s pieces in his words. From there Aman­da’s art took off. She entered a local art show and took best of show and reserved best of show sev­er­al years in a row.

That was when Aman­da real­ly start­ed to dab­ble with all medi­ums. She appre­ci­at­ed the dif­fer­ent styles and tech­niques that pre­sent­ed them­selves in the art world and began to fear­less­ly tack­le hard­er and hard­er tasks. She would push her abil­i­ties to their lim­its doing things she had nev­er tried before. She began to sell paint­ings all over the Unit­ed States and even Europe. Hav­ing col­lec­tors fly in to pick up pieces or see them in per­son was excit­ing and brought such joy to her. She would get emails from all over the world of peo­ple being touched by her gift.

Recent­ly, Aman­da moved back to her small town where she grew up for most of her child­hood. She is cur­rent­ly work­ing on ani­mal preser­va­tion and much of her art reflects those efforts. She has been fea­tured in a mag­a­zine, and was heav­i­ly pub­li­cized local­ly, hav­ing entire gal­leries devot­ed to just her work. She has worked donat­ing use of her works to orga­ni­za­tions such as the Texas Depart­ment of Wildlife in efforts to pre­serve prong­horn ante­lope for instance. Aman­da con­tin­ues to press into new fields and medi­ums, tak­ing on carv­ing, and pyrog­ra­phy. The real joy comes from see­ing what she will come up with next.