What better place to be refreshed by energizing landscapes of water, sky, mountains, and islands than at the current Eric Hopkins exhibit at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland? Leave behind the midsummer doldrums of Route 1 traffic, crowded sidewalks, and the relentless heat and glare of sun. Upon entering the Morehouse Wing, you’ll find yourself becalmed, immersed in a natural world defined by cheerful colors and playful shapes, infused with joyful appreciation of place. Forty-nine paintings by Hopkins and some pieces in wood, glass, and rock are on display through July 27.
“Eric Hopkins: Waypoints” includes representative works through the artist’s career, 1979 to present. Organized by Helen Ashton Fisher, the museum’s Curator of Exhibitions, the show fills several large rooms and hallways. Except for titles and years, it has been presented in no discernible order and without descriptive labeling.
The decision to not define the experience with the perspective of an “expert” allows and encourages the visitor to have his or her own reaction to the pictures. The catalog for the show, available for browsing while in the galleries and for sale in the museum store, does offer some background material, including an introduction by the museum’s director, Christopher B. Crosman, and Fisher’s essay, “Eric Hopkins: Imagery and Sources,” with a description of some critical events and influences in Hopkins’ life, including North Haven, which has been home most of his life. Included with some of the 20 full-color plates are quotes by Hopkins providing additional insight.
What exactly is Eric Hopkins sharing with us? Almost every picture depicts a glimpse of the Fox Islands stretch of Penobscot Bay including North Haven and Vinalhaven. But these are studies of a landscape distilled to its essential elements, where the simplification acknowledges complexity. Hopkins is a realist on his own terms. His subjects are recognizable, yet something off-key and inventive is going on. How about more than one sun in the sky? An island thick with trees stripped down to an oval with a few distinct spikes seemingly floating in space? Water a clashing patchwork of designs and colors? The rugged New England setting, so often steely in color, is daringly vivid in shades more common to the Caribbean, including bright lavender, coral pink and tangerine orange. Hopkins’ palette has innumerable nuances of blue, including turquoise, teal, cobalt, cerulean and indigo. Clouds are fluffy cotton balls or jagged streaks. Some pictures are mostly sky; the water with islands dominates others. Where they meet at the horizon is sometimes an important demarcation and sometimes barely alluded to. Or isn’t. The fact that Hopkins pilots his own plane translates to an aerial perspective shared with the viewer in many paintings. Metaphorically, the sky and sea, seen as merged or reflective of each other, seems to offer some message: two objects very different in definition but with proximity come to interact and influence each other, resulting in a relationship more than just co-existence. Even though his landscapes are composed of natural elements and devoid of human presence – no people, boats, structures, or even lobster pots – Hopkins seems to have human experience in mind. In giving us primal elements, he offers us a primer of some of life’s basics. How sunlight plays on water. How water moves. How islands hover. How sunrise or sunset is neon-lit. He reminds us with a vocabulary and insight we may have last known as children. This exhibit offers a view of Paradise – an aquatic Eden. (One wonders at the corollary and asks: would Hopkins agree with the Bible story – add Adam and Eve and there goes the neighborhood?)
That you can depart the museum and experience the setting firsthand is a plus.
After seeing Hopkins, you may want to find more artwork by others who similarly painted this scene. Marsden Hartley spent time on the Maine coast. Described as having a keen appreciation for the emotional impact of abstracted images, he captured elemental forces in his seascapes through generalized forms rather than with descriptive details. Hartley believed the artist’s challenge was to reveal “the magic that is beneath the surface of what the eye sees.” Arthur Dove also emphasized color, form, and line to extract from an object its essential “spirit.” He wanted his art to communicate his feeling of oneness and harmony with nature. Only in a non-analytic mode, he believed, can the object be “seen” – communication takes place primarily on a visual, non-verbal level. The artist John Marin spent years on Deer Isle. Collector Duncan Phillips saw Marin as a “nature poet- painter” and “lyrical realist” whose “inner vision” and “subconscious calligraphy” produced art with “joyous dynamic pantheism.” It’s a description Hopkins is worthy of as well. The Farnsworth show confirms the unique personal and creative contribution he adds to a venerable tradition.
The Farnsworth Museum is open daily during the summer, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Wednesday evenings until 7. More information is available at
On North Haven, right by the ferry landing, is Hopkins’ gallery. It is open by appointment; information is available online at www.erichopkins.com or by calling (207) 867-2229.
Tina Cohen writes in Deerfield, MA, and on Vinalhaven.