‘This is not about wordly success’

Jackie Macadam meets artist Linda Hoskins and learns more about her connections with a Christian homelessness charity.

“FOR some motherhood can challenge your identity. Who are you now with little ones? I found myself in that space and it began my search of balance between home life and work life.”

Linda Hoskins is a freelance artist with a special interest in working with the Bethany Christian Trust, a charity tackling homelessness. It’s a relationship that goes back a long way.

“We had our wonderful first son in 2013 and having our second brilliant boy in 2017. For some motherhood can challenge your identity. Who are you now with little ones? I found myself in that space and it began my search of balance between home life and work life. I resigned from my job at the time and eventually set up freelance as an artist. More than just a step of faith, it felt like a giant jump off a cliff!!”

It seems, for Linda, that it’s been a leap of faith that has paid off. Faith has always played a large part in Linda, and her husband, Chris, a photographer who has worked extensively with the Church of Scotland in the past.

“Growing up in a family where the gospel was central to how we lived life set the course for me in how I lived my life and looked to the future. After marrying young, my husband and I found ourselves living in Aberdeen for his work, which led to me eventually to studying printmaking at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, graduating in 2011.

“Growing up in a family where the gospel was central to how we lived life set the course for me in how I lived my life and looked to the future.

Alongside my art practice, I began working in the charity sector, not knowing at that point it would ignite a passion within me where the two worlds would eventually collide.

“I sensed something of God nudging me slowly forward, one painting at a time.

“I began to donate a percentage of sales towards the charity Survivors of Human Trafficking in Scotland (SOHTIS), launching a project called the ‘Stay Seen Project’. There was a connecting point with others as I did this and people felt that by purchasing art work it was about something bigger than themselves. It started conversations. Conversations about those who live in some really dark situations and how the charity can help bring about light, change and freedom, all just by hanging a painting in their home. The partnership with SOHTIS snowballed, until three years later I had reached donations of £10,000.” God however, wasn’t done with Linda. “The familiar nudging of God that I have learned to recognise, came again,” she said, “and I knew it was time to move to the next project.

“I had been part of a team for about three years whose aim was to walk alongside vulnerable women in Edinburgh who found themselves in a place where trauma had taken up residence within them and they had to turn to any means necessary just to get day to day, including selling themselves for sex. Ariel, a young woman the same age as me, reached out to us for help after gaining a very traumatic injury and wanted to find a way out.

“We walked a long journey with her and we had been full of faith that Anne Hope House, which Bethany Christian Trust runs, would be the perfect next step for her.

Heartbreakingly it wasn’t to be. Ariel lost her life in 2023 and never made it to Anne Hope House.”

Linda was heartbroken, but found a lesson in her pain.

“It is my view that no life is a waste. That nobody sets foot on this earth to not have a purpose. Meeting Ariel changed a lot in my life and so it felt the best way to honour that was to set up a new project, “Pure Warrior’. For that project, 10% of all my painting sales will go towards supporting the work of Anne Hope House for the next year. There are many women in desperate situations who are seeking a life of lasting change and who CAN recover and find their freedom.”

Linda has found further meaning for her art in her work with Bethany Christian Trust.

“I love the work that Bethany Christian Trust offers, however, this project isn’t just about that. It is about us all being part of something bigger. That as Christians we are required to take what God has put in our hands and do something with it. So that when we show God our offering he can say to us just like in Matthew 25, “You have done well, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share in your master’s happiness.”

“This is not about worldly success, this is about the spiritual key to contentment in life. That as we seek who God made us to be and partner with that, he will reveal more and more to us,” she says.

“For me it looks like creativity, for you it will be something completely different. It isn’t a formula that can be copied or mimicked. It is about your own relationship with Jesus Christ and how when you find yourself in him and the price he paid with his own life for you, everything changes. Life doesn’t become about striving, it becomes about offering. It doesn’t become about reaching the next ladder in success, it becomes about surrender. It becomes about eyes off of ourselves and onto Him. He pours back upon us a life that we could never have dreamed of or imaged without him in it!”

Linda recently held an exhibition in Edinburgh of her work to raise funds for Anne Hope House, a Bethany residential facility for women.

“The exhibition is called ‘Illuminate’. All of my work deals with the theme of light and dark and how the hope of God can come into anyone’s life. It might be through viewing the painting itself that someone feels something within, or perhaps through the title of the piece.

“I didn’t realise when I booked it that it would be there over Easter weekend. It seems an extra special treat, that in a time when the world seems so dark and hope can quickly drain from us when we turn on the news or scroll social media, that this exhibition all about light, is taking place over the week that we as Christians remember God conquered all darkness.

“I always have tension when it comes to plans for the future as I’ve learned that my plans are so boring compared to what God seems to do! My main hope with the exhibition is just for great conversations with people. Someone said to me recently: “Sometimes just by showing up to one thing, your whole life can change.” I love that idea. Maybe life will change at the end of this exhibition, maybe it will look the same and I will continue just to quietly paint at home.

“It would of course be amazing to sell some work as it has been a long time in the making and with the sales supporting the work of Anne Hope House it would be great to be able to donate to them at the end of it. Time will tell!”

“Living a surrendered life has always brought an element of surprise and I am hopeful that is what the future holds. A great big surprise that I don’t know about yet!”