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Budd Hopkins
1931-2011

 

In 1975 I attended the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown MA as part of graduate school at the RI School of Design.  The instructors were Hardu Keck, Jack Tworkov and Budd Hopkins. They all had a big impact on my work but today we are talking about Budd Hopkins, who passed away on Sunday. Classes with Budd usually involved field trips to artist studios around the Cape and his own place high on a hill.  If you looked down from his deck you could see Edward Hopper’s studio in Truro.  There were thirty of us in graduate school at that time and Budd crowded as many in as possible.  He talked about life in New York as a participant/descendant of the Ab Ex school and introduced us to his paintings.  They were very large, hard edge pieces, similar to some of the work going on in New York at the time by people like Albers, Held, Noland, Kelly, but within the various rectangles, triangles and such would be small maelstroms of swirling, streaked, paint drenched colors.  As if he was capturing the essence of the Ab-Ex  period and framing it within his own contemporary context. 

 

His paintings, along with Hopper, really had an effect on my fledgling efforts as a painter, my way of seeing things, as my landscapes for a while became these hard edge experiments, still quite literal, with bits of abstract flourishes here and there. (see last five images (bottom) from 1975 in Gallery One) 

 

To this day what I learned from his paintings continues to have a presence in my work and it is that influence, of Budd’s work, I believe, more than anything else, which elevates them from time to time to become more than just another landscape painting.  He will be missed.

 

Warren Dreher

California

August 2011 

 

 

 

Budd Hopkins in his living room in 1991. (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

 

Budd Hopkins Untitled, Acrylic  2004  Photo courtesy of Levis Fine Art, Inc. 

 

Budd Hopkins Untitled Oil  1968  Photo courtesy of Levis Fine Art, Inc.

 

Copyright Warren Dreher. Reproduction is prohibited without the artist's consent.