Edward Hopper

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Art and Artists

The painting here is called Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper (1882-1967).

Hopper is one of my favourite artists. There is something lonely and nostalgic about his work. The characters in his paintings seem to be somehow separated from the mainstream of society...outsiders. But is it by choice or circumstance that these lonely figures find themselves adrift? The viewer finds himself wanting to know their stories, wanting to explore their situations. Some of his characters seem tired or frightened, somehow weary from the struggle or anxious about some next step on their journey.

This painting is called New York Movie. Hopper shows us a lonely, apprehensive side to the world around us. Like a film noir, his works reveal a world that, although co-existing with ours, was not meant for us to see. The solitary moments of life are captured quietly for prying eyes and we want to know more...to see more. What is her story?

This painting is called Gas. I used to work at a gas station that was almost identical to this. The station, located on the edge of the town, was the last light to be seen for many miles on the dark and winding road through the forested Midwestern landscape. Again the lonely figure, separated from the herd, is captured going about his solitary task.

Hopper captured, for me, an America that was just about to disappear forever into the corporate chaos and mass consumerism that defines us today. Hopper forces us to remember a world that was simpler in some ways than the world we see around us. But he also, disturbingly, brings us face to face with our own solitary existence in this chaos as he reveals his characters to us and we find that part of ourselves that identifies with them.