Anthony Hopkins

If you ask Anthony Hopkins the meaning of a particular painting or drawing, the answer might surprise you.

He says, “I don’t think there’s any meaning in it. I just paint. I discover as I go along and I don’t analyze, I just go for it.”

His art studio is filled to capacity with various paints, oils, acrylics, tempera bottles, pens, markers, brushes, canvases; it’s all a riot of color and possibility. Strangely, even with paintings of all sizes on the walls, the studio exhibits a sense of organized chaos.

Hopkins insists that he has no concept of the results while doing his art. “I do not feel afraid. I don’t feel that I have to prove anything.” This freedom from expectation and judgment allows him to run in whatever direction his imagination happens to be at any split second.

His paintings all have in common the power and vibrancy hidden behind the eyes. He says, “The face is not important. It’s the eyes that are the most haunting part of one’s soul. It’s very primitive. It’s childish art. It has to be childish because I am a child. I’ve discovered lately that I enjoy all that is supposedly wrong with me. I used to take myself so seriously, but now I don’t. I allow myself to revel in the exhilarating nature of life.”

He has no plans to change the way he is working anytime soon. “I’ve never had that kind of academic discipline to work by rules. I work by trial and error. I guess I am purely instinct.”
While working on a painting in his studio he says, “I don’t know where this one is going. But I find that very satisfying. Everything is utter madness. It’s a reflection of what is in my mind. I tell younger people to be it. Enjoy it. This is it. It’s the way we are made. It’s the way I’m made.”