Unintentional ASMR - Pegge Hopper/Bruce Hopper - Artist - How Her Art Relates To Hawaii - 1983

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:16]Well, I'm an artist because >> [sighs] >> I guess I feel it. It's the thing I do best and I get a lot of positive feedback from people and it's been wonderful because I've been able to be a mother and work at home, have a family and uh for a woman, it's a field in which there's no discrimination. You're just as you're accepted for what you are and the quality of your work and um it's it's wonderful it's and it's terrible because it's a very frustrating profession, too.

[00:00:55]Uh you're always striving to reach the unattainable. You start out hoping that a painting will be wonderful and it either doesn't mat mat it usually doesn't come up to your to your expectations.

[00:01:12]But um you just always hope that maybe the next one will and it's it's a it's a neat way to live.

[00:01:23]When I first came to live in Hawaii, I went down to the archives which are adjacent to the palace.

[00:01:31]And um looked through some of the photo collections there.

[00:01:35]One of them in particular was a photo collection of King Kalakaua's and I was so impressed with the quality of the life that the Hawaiians must have enjoyed back around the turn of the century when they would lie on the beaches in their lauhala mat on their lauhala mats with these wonderful muumuus on and although they were they looked like they were enjoying the good life, there was something so sad and poignant about their faces. Their eyes looked so like they were longing for something that that had been lost.

[00:02:13]Or perhaps like they were waiting their turn. Or maybe they felt like they were slightly there was some sort of a time warp going on. They didn't really belong in these clothes.

[00:02:23]And um I I like that juxtaposition to the the kind of strong almost androgenous bodies with the well frilly muumuus and the fancy leis and I just like that contrast that um strength with the very delicate gentleness and and inspired me to to start painting them.

[00:02:52]I don't know. I feel I don't paint reality. I paint something that I would like I guess to be real. The feeling that people can be themselves and can be relaxed and yet strong and can be um beautiful without being seductive.

[00:03:20]I think that the the little seductive hula girl kind of image is just really awful. I think that the Hawaiian people are too dignified and deserve much better than that.

[00:03:33]And you could say that's something else I'm trying to do is to create these people in the strongest and best possible light.

[00:03:42]I get my ideas from every place. Every Everything I see um I can be standing I I be down at the beach. I can be standing in line at Sears and I'll see some wonderful lady and I'll think, "Oh my god, what a face, what it just makes me want to go home and work and um I guess I really am sort of creating uh I don't know. To me, it's Maybe it's me. I don't know, maybe it's me I'm putting up there, the other person that I'd like to be or kind of very controlled and and uh not not caught up in the ways of the world and and yet I am so caught up in the ways of the world. Maybe I paint these things to calm me down.

[00:04:41]Lots of people tell me that it has that effect on them, a calming effect.

[00:04:49]My new style is called groping.

[00:04:53]Groping for a new style. I am in the process right now of I realize that I don't want to give up what I have.

[00:05:04]I just need to enlarge upon it.

[00:05:08]To perhaps as one of my friends says, get a little more soul into my work.

[00:05:14]Um I My work has been criticized for being too decorative and superficial.

[00:05:23]Um I know what people mean when they say that. However, I feel that I am a serious artist and I do want to be taken seriously.

[00:05:35]Not only by others, but by myself. So, I know that one way to do that is to expose yourself to new ideas, new places, new people, and that's my new style is to open up and allow some new ideas to come into my life.

[00:05:59]A few years ago, um when when my husband and I first started doing serigraphs, we decided that first of all, my work lends itself to serigraphy, and uh my husband is has been Bruce is very good technically and felt that he could reproduce some of my paintings very faithfully in the method of with serigraphy.

[00:06:27]And um we did one down town in a funny old actually was down on San Island in a funny old place and um I'll never forget the night we did it because there were termites buzzing all around falling into the ink and but it turned out quite well and we managed to sell them and we felt that this was a way to to not only make a living, but also to give me some time to be able to take more pains with my work because we have become um somewhat dependent on my reproductions now to help put our children through college, all three of them.

[00:07:10]And since I paint very large and not very many a year, um my paintings aren't cheap and so people seem to really like the serigraphs and we love doing them and it's seems to fill um many needs.

[00:07:30]Serigraphy is a technique of printing that involves making a stencil which you apply to stretched fabric on a frame.

[00:07:39]And where the stencil is open, uh the ink will pass through and where it's closed it won't. It's as simple as that.

[00:07:47]And >> [music] >> uh, we have employed here a process of a photo stencil.

[00:07:52]There are a number of different types of stencils that can be used, but [music] we use the photo stencil.

[00:07:56]And uh, then the ink is applied to the silk and pressed through with a squeegee [music] and the impression is made on the paper and that's how you get your print.

[00:08:08]I feel that my contribution to to Hawaii has been and I don't mean this in a derogatory sense, but I feel that I am keeping alive a certain myth about the islands.

[00:08:25]Um, that the islands are filled with only beautiful women and lots of time and soft breezes and no crime and um, lovely vistas and colors.

[00:08:45]And perhaps I'm keeping it alive as much for myself as for the tourists and everyone who lives here. We would all like to think that there is a place where there's still beauty and tranquility and harmony and the aloha spirit.

[00:09:01]And um, maybe that's the function I fulfill.