Westchester, New York-based artist Aimee Hofmann creates vibrant abstract paintings shaped by movement, lived experience, and an evolving relationship with control. Through bold color, layered surfaces, and unconventional mark-making, her practice explores resilience, identity, imperfection, and the freedom that can emerge from embracing unpredictability.

• Aimee balances intention with unpredictability, allowing fluid paint and spontaneous marks to interact with deliberate choices around color, composition, and focal point.
• Aimee's experience as an Asian woman with a disability directly informs her visual language, from using wheelchair wheels to create marks across the canvas to embracing bright color as a way of "taking up space and being heard."
• Through ArtLifting, Aimee’s work has expanded into large-scale murals and installations, including projects for Verizon, Amazon, Intuit, Providence Swedish, Bank of America, and more.

Westchester, New York-based artist Aimee Hofmann creates vibrant abstract paintings through fluid pours, gestural brushwork, signature swirls, and layered mark-making. Her compositions balance structure with spontaneity: bright palettes are consciously selected, while fluid paints are given room to spread, overlap, and interact on the canvas. She then responds intuitively, building layers and directing the viewer's eye through recurring curves, track marks, and sweeping gestures.

Physical movement is embedded directly into Aimee's visual language. Alongside house-paint brushes and brushes with extended handles, she uses her wheelchair wheels to create tracks across the surface. Her signature swirls have an equally personal history: Aimee has drawn them since childhood, with the forms evolving over time from highly structured, defined shapes toward looser, deconstructed designs.

Aimee's lifelong relationship with water is another influence on the movement within her paintings. A lifelong swimmer, she returned to the pool just three months after becoming paralyzed from transverse myelitis in 2006. Fluid paint, saturated blues, and wave-like gestures throughout her work reflect that enduring connection to water.

Her palettes draw from other parts of her life as well. Bright florals and greenery provide inspiration from nature, while fashion — including her own wardrobe — can become a starting point for color. Music and nostalgia from the 1980s also appear through bright neons and pastels that reflect the decade's upbeat energy. Aimee's emotional state can similarly guide her mark-making, with excited, passionate moods producing wild, free gestures and quieter moments leading to softer shapes and colors.

Across these influences, color carries personal significance. As an Asian woman with a disability, Aimee describes bright color as her way of “taking up space and being heard.”

“I'm constantly balancing structure with spontaneity, intention with unpredictability.”

What makes your creative process uniquely yours?

My creative process is deeply intuitive and rooted in both physical movement and emotional release. Initially, I allow the paints to move organically across the canvas as I create layered pours and gestural brushwork.  Unconventional tools such as my wheelchair wheels, house-paint brushes, and extended handles allow me to manipulate the composition.  

I’m constantly balancing structure with spontaneity, intention with unpredictability. My recurring swirls, track marks, and layered surfaces have become visual symbols of movement, resilience, healing, and the cyclical nature of life. Each painting reflects not only my emotional state in the moment, but also the physical way I navigate the world.

What life experiences most deeply influence your work?

The most transformative experience influencing my work was becoming paralyzed from Transverse Myelitis in 2006. During my hospitalization, painting became a form of healing and a way to process grief, loss, fear, and ultimately self-discovery. 

My work is also shaped by my lifelong love of water, which represents freedom, flow and release for me, especially after paralysis. Growing up in New York, living in Switzerland surrounded by the Alps and lakes, motherhood, nostalgia, and my identity as an Asian woman with a disability all inform my visual language. These experiences continue to shape my use of bold color, fluid movement, layered histories, and themes of transformation and resilience.

How has sharing your work through ArtLifting changed your art or your life?

Sharing my work through ArtLifting has been incredibly meaningful both personally and professionally. It has connected my work with major collectors, corporations and healthcare institutions. Beyond expanding opportunities for my career, ArtLifting has validated me as a professional artist and amplified my voice as an artist. 

It has also reinforced the importance of representation within the art world. Knowing that my work can inspire conversations about resilience, accessibility, and human connection has given my practice a deeper sense of purpose.

What do you hope stays with someone after they experience your work?

I hope people leave my work feeling a sense of hope and emotional connection. I want viewers to see a new kind of beauty in imperfection and unpredictability. My paintings are reminders that adversity and uncertainty can lead to growth, beauty, and renewal/rebirth. 

Ultimately, I want viewers to feel energized, uplifted, and reminded that even through life’s challenges, everything comes full circle, continually evolving and moving forward.

As Aimee's practice continues to evolve, so has the scale and reach of her work. In Aimee's words,

“It's the layers of evolution that create the final piece.”

Through ArtLifting, her work has reached new audiences across large-scale murals, corporate environments, and healthcare spaces, including projects for Verizon, Amazon, Intuit, Providence Swedish, Bank of America, and more.

These opportunities have expanded the reach and scale of Aimee's practice while supporting something she speaks about directly: greater representation and equal opportunity for artists with disabilities. As she takes on larger commissions and new creative challenges, Aimee continues to build on the color, movement, layered surfaces, and openness to unpredictability that have come to define her work.

Follow Aimee's creative journey on Instagram.