As a child, Hawkins spent time watching art instructor Jon Gnagy on the television program "Learn to Draw" and as a teenager, taught herself watercolor painting.
In her early career, Hawkins frequented the Museum of Modern Art, New York and spent time exploring galleries on Madison Avenue where she met Linda Good Bryant and became involved with Just Above Midtown (JAM).
Hawkins would go on to develop relationships with other artists at the center of the burgeoning black-owned gallery scene in 1970s/80s New York such as Camille Billops, Vivian E. Browne, and Emma Amos and Thelma Golden.
[8] Hawkins explored religion in the early 1990s before creating the Natural Things (1996), an evolution of work that began from the artist's examination of the shapes that emerge from the physical world.
[9] This led Hawkins to create Signs of Civilization in the early 2000s, a series in which the artist abstractly depicts naturally occurring forms and manmade incursions from 30,000 feet above.
In her current work, Hawkins continues to integrate her lifelong interest in themes centered around nature, the cosmos, science, and mark making while remaining invested in creating new kinds of color relationships.
[17][18] • Black Metropolis Research Consortium Fellowship, 2009 • Rockland Community College Award for Artistic Excellence, 1996 • The Herbert and Irene Wheeler Grant, 1995 • Rockland Community College Award for Artistic Excellence, 1995, 1994 • Patricia Roberts Harris Fellowship, United States Department of Education (Full Academic Fellowship) 1990-1992 • Atlanta Life Insurance Company, Exhibition and Competition, Atlanta, GA (2nd place Mixed Media 1984) • Brooklyn Museum Art School Scholarship, Brooklyn, NY (Watercolor 1972) • Provincetown Workshop Scholarship, Provincetown, MA (Painting 1975) • "Historicizing African American Abstraction, Printmaking, and Activism in 1960s and 1970s New York City"[19] • "Extending the Notion of Activism in Wes and Missy Collection of African American Prints and Works on Paper"[20]