JOANNE HOPPER

“Rublev Watercolors have been a fantastic addition to my painting practice. I love to use them for 3–color limited palette paintings. My Rublev Colours Watercolor travel palette goes with me often when I work in plein air. The tubes are full of gorgeous, rich, highly pigmented, brilliant color. The digital pics don’t do them justice. My Favs: Cadmium Red Light (the most beautiful cad red I’ve ever seen!) Cobalt Turquoise, Alizarin Crimson and all of the Earth colors. Their slightly larger particle size allows them to lift well, making them a dream to work with for sketches and studio paintings. I highly recommend them !”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

I use pigments, brushes, and papers from all over the world: France, Italy, Great Britain, Holland, Germany, Ukraine, Belgium, Japan, China, South America, Canada, Viet Nam, India, Micronesia, Russia, Uzbekistan, and several states here in the USA (including Hawaii). I regularly chat or communicate with artists in many mediums from most of the countries above and others. And—amazingly—none of this seems out of the ordinary at this time and place.

Brief background: I’ve been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember. With a less-than-ideal childhood, drawing was my “drug” of choice. I could disappear for hours and have something to show for it at the end. 1996, I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in painting and honors. I have always had art-related work, commissions, design work, illustrations, and architectural renderings, and I have spent 25+ years in the scenic industry out of New York. We moved to Maui in 2012 after my husband died unexpectedly, where I continued my work as a full-time independent artist.

I recently produced a book (available on my website, JoanneHopper.com, and Instagram) called Joanne Hopper Studio... So Far: Paintings. This book (and more in the works) has been a fantastic exercise, a personal retrospective of what I’ve created ... so far. It is for myself, my children, my collectors, and anyone interested in this artist’s journey. It was a great learning experience - both about the actual process of putting a book together and the reflections and reminiscences of the works included.

My paintings have been created from life, plein air, or studio setups. Some pieces take 2-4 returns to the location, and some are finished in the studio. Some pieces are entirely studio work, using sketches and photo references. Generally, metalpoint drawings are done in the studio.

Watercolor, gouache, metal point, and oil are my favorite mediums. Sometimes I combine one or more technique. The subject tells me what medium it needs to be represented with. My diversity of subjects mirrors my interests. It is a conviction that the energy that we put out into the world can affect us all, not only through visuals and words but by our collective unconscious. So, my work is about joy, light, color, experimentation, exploration, and hopeful positivity to bring the same to others - to offset the absurd negativity around us, to point out the magic in life available to everyone.

Having a Down Syndrome daughter keeps me involved with the special needs community in Maui. I use my art to support her and her ohana in any way I can by designing logos, painting signs, donating materials and time, etc. She and her peers have given me more than I could put in words or be able to give back to them in this lifetime.