Aimée Rolin Hoover (b. 1969, Philadelphia) is an American painter who has devoted the past 25 years to exploring animal imagery. Originally from Philadelphia and now based in Southern California, Hoover earned her art degree from California State University Long Beach in 1992. Her early career included over 150 commissioned works for private collectors, which led to national media attention and celebrity clientele.
Her current body of work explores the vital connection between humans and the healing power of the natural world—a relationship she sees as increasingly important in the face of our digitally dominated, indoor lives. She lives in Palos Verdes, California, and maintains a studio in nearby Torrance.
"I’ve been fascinated by animals ever since I was a kid. Childhood sketchbooks were packed with doodles of local wildlife. And many afternoons were spent attempting to befriend those same creatures.
But it wasn’t until adulthood that I understood how foundational this early fascination was to my work."
Encounters with animals—whether approaching a curious horse at a fence line or locking eyes with a wild coyote—have always grounded me in the moment. They’ve granted me access to an internal stillness that I still struggle to find even with meditation.
I believe this is the superpower of nature and animals: they help us live more squarely in the moments of our own lives. From the simple joy of playing with our dogs after a long day of work, to staring in awe at an African elephant on the Serengeti, animals have the power to remind us where we actually are.
My paintings are attempts to hold onto these profound but fleeting moments. And to translate them into a visual language that ideally evokes the same groundedness and emotion in the viewer.
My technique is intentionally painterly, gestural, often raw at the edges. I generally resist the confines of strict realism in favor of capturing the energy and emotion of a moment. By balancing more highly rendered areas to ground the painting in reality, combined with soft abstraction, I use my subjects more as portals to channel specific feeling states—exuberance, serenity, or introspection—rather than offering traditional wildlife depictions.
In an age when our attention is splintered and our relationship to the natural world is increasingly experienced through screens, honoring nature in my work feels necessary to me. And a life-long endeavor worth pursuing.
With all this said, Wendell Berry still said it best...
The Peace of Wild Things
"When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
– Wendell Berry