Denise Hopkins INTRODUCTIONS

Getting to know Denise

1. What is your earliest memory?

Crayons. Sharp ones. Blue and orange. I was in preschool, maybe a two year old class. I remember sitting at the table and being absolutely delighted by pressing the point onto a coloring sheet.

2. Have you ever met a celebrity? Which celebrity would you like to meet?

I met Sean Payton (Former New Orleans Saints head coach) when I was sitting outside a coffee shop with a friend from high school and he was walking into the Baskin-Robinns next door. It was just after the 2006 season, the year after Hurricane Katrina, when my beloved Saints made it to the NFC championship and lost to the Bears. I started going to games when I was a young child and stayed a die hard fan even when most people had dubbed them the “aint’s” and were wearing bags over their heads to the games. “Do you know who that is?” I nearly squealed to my friend. She didn’t. “That’s Sean Payton” I announced. Her response? “Did we graduate with him?” After explaining to her the historic season we’d just had, I got the nerve to talk to him and tell him how much the Saints meant to me and how proud I was of the team last season. He was gracious and we parted ways each with a simple “who dat.”

I would very much like to drink wine with Oprah and Brene Brown.

3. How do you waste time most often

Googling ailments and/or their cures, pinning recipes, and mindlessly scrolling through instagram.

4. What do you like that everyone else seems to dislike?

I truly love to mow the lawn. I like the smell; I like the heat. I like blaring music into my headphones and I really like the satisfaction of the overlapping rows formed by the mower. I also enjoy figuring out the most efficient paths to take to get as many long straightaways as possible.

5. What is the best advice you have ever received?

Feel your feelings. I think it came from a book I read in my early 30s. It talked about riding your feelings like a wave rather than obsessing over them or stuffing them way deep, dark down— both things I was certainly doing. The advice was about letting them pass through you without judgement. Acknowledging them without letting them take over. It changed everything for me.

6. What was your first job?

My first job was babysitting and I did a lot of it. I started watching the boys across the street from me when I was 11 or 12. We’d order pizza (using a landline) and jump on their trampoline for hours. I changed diapers. Those boys are now in their 30s.

7. Name one celebrity crush, past or present.

I had it bad for Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the 90s.

Stay A While

2022 - 30x40" - Oil on Canvas - $2700.00

"This painting is about exploring the wilderness of our own thoughts which are invisible but can often take up a lot of emotional space. I wondered what it might look like to represent what goes on inside our heads. Ultimately, I ended up placing a bird in the thick textures. The bird is mostly aspirational– I want my interior world, even when chaotic, to be a safe place to land and spend time in. Interestingly, I asked some of my social media followers what they saw in this work, and several of them saw motherhood and a struggle to let children “leave the nest.” While it wasn’t my intention, this interpretation rings true for me, and I love that people related to it in that way."

Flew The Nest

2021 - 18"x24" - Oil on Canvas - $1000

"In this painting, I was thinking about what it’s like to make something intangible, tangible. Once again, I’ve attempted to represent a person’s thoughts, but this time the bird has left the nest of thoughts and has entered the world. For me, that’s what painting does– gives form to something that begins as an abstract idea."