CONNERSMITH is pleased to announce “Reckoning,” the latest body of paintings by Jessica Maria Hopkins. In this series 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 reflects. “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.”

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.”

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.”

Jessica Maria Hopkins, born in Washington, DC, lives and works in Takoma Park, MD. Her artistic training at Howard University aligns her practice with the painting traditions of Alma Thomas and the AfriCOBRA movement. She has exhibited at the Delaware Museum of Art, and her work is in the collection the University of the District of Columbia as well as numerous private collections.