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Self Portrait, 1991, oil on canvas, 24” x 30” by Talbot Hopkins
For as long as she can remember, Talbot Hopkins has found refuge, self-discovery, and connection in portraiture. Leaving Virginia in the wake of a parental divorce, Hopkins moved with her mother to Shreveport, where as a student at the Southfield School, she came under the influence of an art teacher named Camille Sicard Hirsch—herself the daughter of well-known Shreveport portrait and landscape painter Louis G. Sicard. “At the age of nine or ten, Camille Hirsch taught me to draw faces and I loved it,” recalled Hopkins. “I was an extremely shy child, so I think that portraiture was my way of connecting with people; of being able to talk with people.”
Early in her career, that shyness led Hopkins to draw her subjects primarily from photographs, but as time goes by she’s discovered that what she really loves is to paint from life. “As I’ve gotten older I’m far less anxious about people. You can create excellent work from photography, but the process of being with a person—of seeing their eyes and their movement and hearing their voice—there’s no substitute for that.”
Because as Hopkins explains, a faithful portrait has as much to do with capturing a personality or an approach to life, as with creating an exact likeness. “I am striving to capture the essence of who they are—their personality, as much as verisimilitude,” she observed. “I try to make my portraits express mental and emotional states. When you paint someone you know well it’s so different.”
No surprise then, that as an exercise in self-discovery, Hopkins returns again and again to the self-portrait. “With my self-portraits, I’m able to conceal and reveal parts of my identity at the same time,” she said. You know yourself best, and with a self-portrait you’re able to express so much emotional information.”
Working in a restrained palette, Hopkins admits a classical aesthetic that reflects her love for the work of American master painter Andrew Wyeth, and that of Dutch masters like Vermeer and Rembrandt—artists whose muted backgrounds and somber colors accentuate the vitality and drama of their subjects’ lives. “Light is everything in art,” she noted. “Maybe it’s the simplicity, but I like dark and light.”
Even today, as an accomplished artist whose output extends to still lifes and landscapes in various mediums, Hopkins finds her artist’s eye drawn back to people. “As human beings we’re just drawn to the human form and face, and the way we look at each other.” she observed. “In the end, it’s always people that are most interesting to me.”
This month Talbot Hopkins will be profiled on LPB’s Art Rocks, the weekly showcase of Louisiana’s visual and performing arts hosted by Country Roads’ publisher James Fox-Smith. Tune in Friday, October 20, at 8:30 pm, repeating Saturday, October 21, at 5:30 pm, across the LPB network. lpb.org/artrocks.
