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Mr. HooperJuly 2 - August 1, 2009OPENING FIRST THURSDAY: Thursday July 2, 2009 - 6pm-8pm OPEN DAILY: Wednesday thru Saturday 11am-5pm CLOSING: Saturday August 1, 2008 WHERE: Garde Rail Gallery - 110 Third Avenue South - Tel.206.621.1055 Mr. Hooper is from Nashville, TN, and his work is heavily influenced by American folk art, outsider art, graffiti and tattoo art, as well as popular culture, television and comic books. In his meticulous and detailed paintings, he reveals the seedy side of Nashville and also explores his boyhood “toy” fixation. Mr. Hooper's art is an amalgamation of pop icons, cartoon characters, dirty streets and urban decay. The pieces are usually detailed narratives interlaced with Hooper's singular wit and unique style. While Mr. Hooper's art is sometimes categorized as folk or outsider art, we prefer to call it Pop Folk, as Mr Hooper is one of a handful of young Southern (mostly) self-taught artists working in this exciting new sub-genre. "I grew up in Nashville, TN in the '70s and '80s - a typical middle-class kid who watched way too much TV. My first artistic endeavors were drawing on the walls of my closet with a purple crayon, copying characters from the funny pages and rendering all four members of Kiss. In high school, some kid brought a R. Crumb comic book to school. Crumb's art had a huge impact on me and inspired me to become a cartoonist. I spent my twenties creating comics and trying to get them published (with little success). After college, a myriad of low paying, dead-end jobs, and limited prospects in the cartooning business, I picked up a paint brush and began to paint in 1998. My paintings are an extension of what I was doing as a cartoonist, though not quite the same linear narrative as comic strips. Again, through self-training, trial and error, my paintings have evolved into distinctive artwork." "For years while I was doing comix and graffiti, I operated under several pseudonyms. I never intended to be a painter who operated under a pseudonym. However, I had a teacher in college who addressed everyone by their last name. The parallel between me being Mr. Hooper and the character on Sesame Street (also named Mr. Hooper) was irresistible to my classmates. The nickname stuck with me and I began to sign prints and eventually paintings with Mr. Hooper. My given name is Tim Hooper but you can call me Mr. Hooper - everyone else does." |
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 Mr. Hooper
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All content ©1998-2008 Garde Rail Gallery. All Rights Reserved. |
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