My friend John Hopwood, who has died aged 72, was an artist all his life, creating detailed and beautiful portraits and still-life paintings, mainly in oil but also other media. John exhibited in many galleries in London and the Thames valley region. He had several paintings accepted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, including a portrait of the artist Andrew Logan. Two of his works, Apparition: Sun Man (1991) and Tunnel of Trees (2006), have been purchased by Reading Museum.
John was born in Wiltshire, only child of Daisy and Fred Hopwood. After three years, the family moved to Hare Hatch, near Twyford in Berkshire. John studied at Berkshire College of Art (1958-62) and moved to a cottage in Wytham, near Oxford, for seven years, where he married – briefly – in 1970. Here he painted his Self Portrait in White (1970), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1974, and illustrated Sir Ernst Gombrich’s book on the psychology of pictorial representation, The Image and the Eye (1981).
John moved back to Hare Hatch and took a part-time job as a gardener, while continuing to paint. Beginning in about 1990, his style began to change radically from meticulous figurative paintings that nevertheless contained a mysterious symbolism and distorted perspective, to a style based on geometric designs. He held a retrospective of his figurative paintings at the Julius Gottlieb Gallery, and an exhibition of new work at Henley Business School gallery, both in 1993.
In 1992 the happiest period of his life began, when he started living with Annie de Boel; they married in 1999, and bought a cottage in St Ives. John’s work became hugely influenced by the light and colours of Cornwall, and this was a productive period for him. He held two major exhibitions at the New Millenium Gallery in St Ives, in 2005 and 2008.
John hated getting old; he always looked at least 10 years younger than his age, and was usually dressed in jeans, trainers and baseball cap.
He is survived by Annie and her two daughters, Eva and Sofia.
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