My artwork has always been about attempts to express feelings evoked by what I see in the immediate world around me. Every day, I come across some combination of visual elements that causes me to stop and say to myself, ”There’s a picture here!” It may be a group of buildings seen in the magical light of a particular moment in time, or the reflections in a cafe window, or a random group of signs, or the complex expanse of a city view. My task after that initial vision is to try to figure out what attracted me in the first place, and to find a way to express my feelings through painting, drawing or printmaking.
Although I am basically a “realist” in that I derive my inspiration from the observable world, I am also an “abstract “ artist because I see my pictures primarily as compositions composed of interlocking shapes, colors and values, rather than as descriptions of specific places or vehicles for literary or political statements. Thus the “subject matter” of a picture may often be considered inconsequential or even ugly to most spectators, while for me it is a marvelous gold mine of visual raw material waiting to be exploited and hopefully, after more hard work than I usually anticipate, turned into a pictorial expression of my feelings.
~ Stephen Hopkins, 2009
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