Emma Hopkins Paints People ‘From the Inside Out’

Artist Emma Hopkins describes her work as painting “people from the inside out.” This idea seems to work on both physical and emotional levels, as her arresting portraits and meditations are teeming with vulnerability. Her subjects are often unclothed, and even when she focuses on isolated body parts or strips off their skin, humanity is present.

The artist’s subjects are often real people. Take 89-year-old Geri Morgan, an artist also based in London. Morgan is a painter who had much experience in painting figures from models, but had never been the subject himself. “We explored the nature of being the observer and observed by both taking on the role of the model and painter,” Hopkins says, in an Instagram post.




The artist’s own work is informed from “two very distinct driving forces,” she says. The first is a scientific mindset that analyzes the world on several layers; the latter is more creative and “free-spirited” and “instinctively knows there are no definitive answers.” These days, her work strives to harmonize those mindsets. Hopkins has two London shows coming up: “Modern Panic” at Newspeak House and “Face/Time” at 90 Picadilly.