Featured Artist - John Hopkins

Art and Science are the two passions that guide John Hopkin's life. As a child, he studied art in Iramagawa, Japan and was also privileged to visit the great museums of Europe, experiences that left a lasting impression and would later provide inspiration to his creative mind.

Hopkins is also a trained Zoologist and Ecologist. His professional career as a science and art teacher, and environmental biologist has taken him from classrooms in Louisiana and New Mexico to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. This closeness to the world of nature has enabled him to perceive the world around him with a clarity and understanding that eludes many other artists.

When he paints, Hopkins melds his scientific knowledge with his artistic nature to produce magnificent landscapes that demonstrate his exceptional love for and understanding of the natural world . The artist paints in oils employing a palette knife and his fingers. Using lush impasto and transparent passages, he moves from substantial foregrounds to the lightness of air. The completed work has an exuberance of color and texture, which combine to capture the ever-changing moods found in nature. Although his work is very loosely rendered, the viewer's eye often interprets values of textured light and dark surfaces as fine detail.

Hopkins work is represented in galleries in El Paso and Houston, TX; Santa Fe and Ruidoso, NM and Sedona and Scottsdale, AZ and in private collections throughout the United States, and in the Middle East, Japan, Europe and Canada.