Hampton artist Kathy Hooper puts lifetime of remarkable work up for sale

CBC News

· Posted: May 14, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 1 infinitesimal ago

For 2 days successful June, creation lovers successful New Brunswick volition person a unsocial accidental to research the idiosyncratic postulation of Kathy Hooper, including paintings, drawings, sculptures and ceramics, amassed implicit decades, successful her studios successful Hampton. 

At 89, Hooper remains an unstoppable unit and inactive occupies the homestead wherever she raised her family, with its chaotic and sprawling gardens. But the household agrees the clip has travel to stock with the nationalist what's been hidden away and perchance adjacent forgotten.  

For decades, successful her lofty and luminous studio, Hooper's been truthful unassumingly prolific, adjacent her daughters person mislaid way of her canvases, which often diagnostic animals, mountains, and plants.  

"Many pieces, peculiarly drawings, we've ne'er seen earlier arsenic they've been squirrelled distant successful drawers," Tandi Hooper-Clark said.  

WATCH | Kathy Hooper and her daughters accidental they're acceptable to portion with a beingness of archetypal work: 

Home-schooled successful South Africa, Kathy Hooper concisely attended London's Central School of Art but chose to permission the programme aft uncovering it wasn't for her.

The chaotic and untamable fields of her puerility and present astir her location marque an irresistible metaphor for her assemblage of work, which defies categorization.

"It's highly eclectic," said John Leroux, manager of the Marion McCain Institute for Atlantic Canadian Art.

"It's lively, it's vibrant. It's colourful, It's precise humanist and deals with our mundane beingness and our transportation to nature. She's a devout environmentalist arsenic good and that comes done successful a batch of her art."

Kathy's originative tone has been an inspiration to galore New Brunswick artists, writers and filmmakers. Mountaiins of Wonder, a abbreviated documentary by Matt Brown, premiered astatine the Saint John Arts Centre successful 2023. More recently, writer Liane Thibodeau has assembled a photograph publication titled Drawing successful Your Imagination.

A communal taxable is the artist's independency and singular self-insulation from commercialized pressures.

Kathy Hooper, galore observe, is never, ever, hustling for a sale. 

"I'm a painter," the creator herself said successful an interrogation with CBC News. "I similar what I bash and I effort to marque bully paintings, you know, and if it works retired for me, I deliberation that's OK."  

Hooper's travel to Canada is besides a salient portion of her story. 

She chose to permission the farmland wherever she grew up because, she said, she could not judge the radical segregation imposed by the South African government. 

She and her precocious husband, creator John Hooper, near for England but aboriginal chose to settee successful Canada, aft helium got a occupation successful the 1960s, gathering the creation programme for Saint John nationalist schools. 

John Hooper, known for his sculptures of people, died successful 2010 and immoderate of Kathy's drawings explicit her grief. 

"It was a bittersweet time," she said. "He was a truly bully man. Very good, precise good, and a bully artist."

In the years that followed, Sue Hooper helped her parent modulation the household spot into an inviting abstraction for radical from each backgrounds to travel and research the creator within. 

"'We get unopen down," said Sue, describing however radical travel to judge they don't person the endowment oregon instinct to draw. "But everybody has a originative essence. We're originative beings."

A beingness retrospective of Kathy Hooper's painting, printmaking, carving and drafting — curated by Amy Ash — travelled to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery successful Fredericton successful 2024. 

"That retrospective was a immense eye-opening to what an incredible, unthinkable creator she is," Sue said. "She was fearless."

The Beaverbrook also purchased Strong Woman 1, an ink drafting from 1970.   

Leroux tracked down a punctuation from Kathy Hooper, published astatine that time. 

"I privation to accidental however infinitely beautiful, however ugly, however comic and however breathtaking the satellite is. I privation to agelong arsenic acold and excavation arsenic heavy arsenic I can. I privation to accidental determination is thing I cognize for definite but that determination is thing I cognize for sure," Leroux said, speechmaking from the catalogue.

Tandi inactive has a fewer weeks to scour the past nooks and crannies of her household property for immoderate stray pieces that mightiness spell successful the show. 

"She was ne'er acrophobic to experimentation and surely didn't overgarment to delight others," Tandi said, surrounded by pieces that ne'er were framed. "She painted what she wanted to paint."  

"The taxable substance could beryllium rather acheronian successful nature, afloat of symptom oregon grief oregon precise airy and funny. They, of course, could besides conscionable beryllium beautiful." 

Hooper studios volition big the lawsuit titled Two Days successful June connected June 7 and 8. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.