Artist explores abstraction process

WASHINGTON, D.C. (PNAN) – Online at CONNERSMITH through November 2025, “Reckoning” is the latest body of paintings by Jessica Maria Hopkins. In this series, artist Hopkins departs from her earlier concentration on figural imagery to explore elements of abstraction that have always informed her work.

 “With each application of color, I apply part of myself and my art process,” Hopkins says. As she builds imagery by applying different colors in response to one another, the artist uses a sgraffito technique to incise patterns in multiple layers of wet paint. “I subtract pigment and write a different language,” she explains. “I scratch through undefined paths of color to create a new surface where I can search for something I am trying to understand.”

The artist explains, “Each color and brushstroke in my paintings has different meanings generated by personal experiences. I embrace the ambiguity that my images communicate with colors that embody the unknown – something mysterious that I want to comprehend.”  

For Hopkins, vertical lines traversing colorful fields of paint suggest bodies moving through another dimension. “Like x-ray imaging, my style shifts from representation to abstraction, suggesting figures through implied shapes in constructed space,” she asserts. “As in physical life, my work is in constant evolution.”

To view see: https://www.connersmith.us.com/exhibitions/jessica-maria-hopkins-reckoning

About

Jessica Maria Hopkins (b. 1983, Washington, DC) is a figurative painter who lives and works in Takoma Park, Maryland. Her artistic training at Howard University aligns her practice with the painting traditions of Alma Thomas and the AfriCOBRA movement. “Each figure I paint narrates my growth as a woman of color,” Hopkins imparts. The artist experiments with surface texture, explores the symbolic value of decorative patterning, and accesses the emotional potential of color in her work. Hopkins’ work has been featured in exhibitions at The Howard University Gallery of Art and The Delaware Contemporary. Hopkins’ work is in the collection of the University of the District of Columbia as well as numerous private collections.