As a student in the BFA and MFA programs, she was informed that her art school's painting classes were reserved for male students, at which point she became committed to finding her own feminine artistic language with which to speak about women, as a woman. “It was then that, suddenly, I realized I was a woman. I decided to speak about this – and to make painting at the same time. This is what I’m doing. It’s painting with the conscience that I’m a woman.’ Innovative and provocative, she used sewing and embroidery—skills learned from her mother and grandmother and typically associated as "women's work"—as a medium for celebrating and asserting women into the art world. Amer's approach to mediums and subjects from an emphatically female perspective manifest itself throughout her career.