A couple of weeks ago, in the sand hills north of Byron, Wyoming, I had a good time painting some small things. Boy, was it green! This little piece of the rock behind me turned out really nice. Everybody probably knows it by now, but "Plein Air" is a fancy french word that means standing there in nature and painting what is in front of you...or, in other words, painting on location.
I was surprised and pleased when I opened my June issue of the Ensign Magazine and saw the inside front cover. I had forgotten that The art department of that magazine had chosen this painting. The painting represents the day Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdrey were baptized in the Susquehanna River in the very northern part of Pennsylvania, while they were involved in translating and transcribing the Book of Mormon. I visited and spent some time at the very spot where I think the baptism took place. It was a grand and marvelous day when I was there, as you can see. I waded out into the river. The water was clear and beautiful.
A few months back, my cousin Ann Hamblin Copelan, showed me the remains of a unique building that some of her ancestors built and lived in. It was a dugout on the north side of a large hill and was called Fourteen Mile, because it was fourteen miles north of Rock Springs, Wyoming. Ann’s Grandparents ranched there in the early 1900’s.
During my visit I took photos of the remains and made sketches and then painted this picture. I also had the help of a rough sketch by one of Ann’s relatives, Betty Ann Allen Ward.
It was well built with a rock front and wood post and beams to hold up the wood roof that was covered with turf. It consisted of four rooms and two storage rooms. One can clearly see the remains of one of the rooms and the storage room. The remains of an aquifer below that brought in good cold water, are still there as well a partially standing stone barn and corral.
This painting represents Fourteen Mile as a ranch house, rest stop and watering hole for Wyoming travelers, cowboys and even some outlaws.
This 30 x 40 oil painting shows some guys that are on their way to perform some serious business.
I always enjoy doing a winter scene and this 16x20 painting (bottom picture) of some Indian Men turned out to be a favorite of mine. So I pulled out an 18x24 canvas and proceeded to do a couple of Mountain Men (top Picture) in a similar composition. Then as it has unfolded, I put in a recent camp site in the lower left hand corner. I think it was the Indian guys and when they heard the white men coming, they either vamoosed or they are lurking behind some trees. Fun paintings, and I'm almost finished.
"Farewell My Son", shows a mother's concern as her young man son leaves on a dangerous journey. My thanks to Florence Realbird whose wonderful face made this painting possible. After so many years, I am sure that Florence is in the Land of the Ancestors with the Great Spirit in the sky.
I met Florence Realbird at Crow Agency, Montana many years ago. My friend, Kieth Merrill was filming "The Great American Indian", a followup of his Academy Award winning film "The Great American Cowboy". Florence was one of the people on the banks of The Little Big Horn River who were in some of the scenes in the movie. She was taking care of a small child much of the waiting time (there is always a lot of waiting time on a movie set). I was there sketching and photographing and saw Florence in this poignant moment. After I painted this painting I made the mistake of giving it to my wife, Pamela, for Christmas (I could have sold it many times). Actually, I'm very glad she would not sell it, because...
...In 1991, our son Travis was a machine gunner in the 25th Infantry Division on the border of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, as Desert Storm, the first war with Iraq, approached. We received very little news and we were concerned and worried parents. We had a hard time sleeping and would be at the television day and night watching the CNN reports to catch any bit of news we could about the war and our son's combat unit.
"Farewell My Son" hung over the television set with a large yellow ribbon attached and gave us some comfort and made us realize that this scenario is all too familiar in our world that is constantly troubled by wars.
We are still grateful to God. Our boy came home.
Because we always seem pressed for time, we kept putting off a trip to Utah to see the art exhibition Carl Bloch: The Master’s Hand. Finally, Monday, April 11 we got on a plane in Tucson and went to the show at the BYU Art Museum in Provo, Utah. Pam and I visited the show that day for a few hours and the next day also. We came back home April 12. What a visual and spiritual experience. You must go!
Carl Bloch was an artist in Denmark who lived from 1834 to 1890. He was a very good painter but his paintings of the Savior are sublime. Featured in the show are five larger-than-life altarpieces. Four of these have come from Lutheran churches in Denmark and Sweden, removed for the first time since they were originally installed in the late 1800s. There are also many other pieces that he painted, some of them sketches in preparation for the larger paintings. The presentation by the BYU Museum 
is masterfully done. You will not come away unmoved.
It makes me want to be a better painter and a better man. It is of great comfort and joy to know that my Redeemer lives!
As we came into the 20th Century River Crossings were still fraught with hazards. This painting is presently showing at the Dixie College Art Show in St. George, Utah.
This painting was featured at an art show at the Tucson Mountain Oyster Club yearly art show held in the fall.
Eight to twelve miles each day was the average progress for Pioneers moving West in the middle of the 19th Century. Big deep rivers always took a few days of team work for a wagon train.
While watching the LDS movie about Jesus called The Testament I froze my favorite frame which shows the debut of the famous husband and wife acting team of Todd and Sheila Hopkinson. Spencer Hopkinson, a six month old baby at the time, was also in the scene, but as you can see was upstaged by some greedy actress with black hair. I think it was in the year 2000. 
The painting is getting close to being finished. A frame goes on it tomorrow and a few more odds and ends before the signature goes on. Sometimes I need some days just to let it sink in, to make sure it is as good as it can be.
The painting is progressing nicely. I decided to represent all of the seven children, as well as my great-great grandfather, Edward. He is in the top hat in the back ground with two of his daughters as they thank the woman who brought the bread. My great-grandmother Eliza is the young child on the ground dozing against the leg of her Mother, Sarah.
It is interesting to note that the Union Pacific Railroad was pushing west from Omaha, as fast as possible and at this time in June of 1868, the end of track was clear to Cheyenne, Wyoming. The pioneers in 1868 still went by wagons all the way to Salt Lake City. Of course, the next year on May 10 1869 at Promontory, Utah the continent was traversed as the two railroad companies pounded the golden spike. I am not sure why the 1868 pioneers couldn't travel by rail as far west as possible making the wagon trip shorter. There must have been some regulations preventing it, or it was still too costly.
There is still quite a bit to do on the painting. The boy in the foreground is still to be painted as well as a child figure in the back ground. Nothing is safe at this point. If something doesn't work, then it gets repainted or painted over.
I always look forward to the Christmas Season when we get together with family and friends. As usual, any project one gets to working on (thinking they have a flow) there will be interruptions. With a tip of the hat to the best Santa painter in the world, Howard Sunblom, who painted the Coca Cola Santa in the 1940s and 1950s, I cut out and painted Santas (using Sunblom Santas for inspiration) for Christmas gifts. Now back to finishing "Six Loaves" (see previous posts).
I spend several days drawing and redrawing the background figures to make it the most pleasing arrangement. I got the main group pretty well right off the bat...
...and when it is right, I begin! It is so much fun!
After I work with the models, I organize a small color sketch 9x18. The painting is going to be 20x40 
As soon as that is done with a pleasing color scheme, I anxiously move on to the drawing the figures on the canvas.
The Models
I took a whole load of costumes and had my daughter Heather and her girls, Lily, Lavender and Zinnia pose for me. After which I painted a small color sketch. With such beauty, how can I go wrong?
THE STORY
My Great-great grandmother Sarah Bagshaw married Edward Bradshaw in England in 1850. In 1868 the family, consisting of Sarah and Edward and seven children, ranging in age from 2 years to 17, came to America by ship. The ocean trip took six weeks. Then they got on the train and arrived in Omaha. Sarah was “with child” as they said in those days, and nearing the end of her pregnancy. Nursing the two year old who was quite sick and the three day train trip to Omaha kept Sarah pretty well worn and frazzled.
While waiting for the wagon and teams that had come out from Utah to be organized for the trek back across the plains, a woman who was a stranger approached Sarah and asked her if there was anything she could do to help.
Back in England Sarah had baked a lot of bread to take on the trip, but it had been eaten by the family long ago. The good sister told Sarah that she had just taken six loaves of bread from the oven and Sarah could have them all. This offer was gratefully accepted.
My great grandmother Eliza Bradshaw Roberts wrote about the long trip west.
“The young folks that could walk hardly ever rode, the teams and oxen were heavily loaded. At night all the musical instruments was brought out [and] although very tired, young and old would dance. [my] Brother Sam Bradshaw would play either flute or concertina, the boys that was sent to meet the Saints and drive them to Zion used very rough language for Mormon boys. [Yet] They joined in all the pleasure as well as sorrow and learned the Saints to dance, arriving in Salt Lake City, September 1868.”
Shortly thereafter, the family settled in Minersville, Utah, about 19 miles west of Beaver on todays I-15.
THE SKETCHES
A cousin of mine commissioned me to do this painting. I was very pleased, especially since I had not been familiar with these common ancestors. I prepared some sketches to help her visualize the experience and communicate the best way to present this great story. One of the challenges was placing all the children at their correct ages in the painting. I chose to show Sarah, the mother, with only two or three of the children in the main group.
Sometime in 1987 I walked into the studio of my father, Harold Hopkinson. He had some costumes that he wanted me to wear. I was to pose as a Founding Father (actually several Founding Fathers as it turned out). He was working on a very large painting depicting a vision that Wilford Woodruff had when he was presiding over the St. George Temple in 1877. Apostle Woodruff had this to say: I will here say... that two weeks before I left St. George, the spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they,
"You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God."
These were the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and they waited on me for two days and two nights. (Journal of Discourses, Vol.19, pp. 229-31; September 16, 1877)
In the fifteen years that I had been a practicing full time artist my relationship with my father (also a full time professional artist) was very close personally and professionally. We had many shows together, we often painted together and we relied upon each other for totally honest discussions and critiques of one another’s paintings.
I was very impressed by the scope and complexity of the painting of the Founding Fathers that he had started on. He had dozens sketches and many reproductions of portraits of such people as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin around the studio. That was the first I had ever heard of Wilford Woodruff’s vision.
Over the next few months as I worked upon my own projects in my studio I would frequently visit Dad at his studio where he would often ask me to pose and would always ask for my opinion. My main contribution was kind of like in the movie “The Agony and the Ecstasy” where Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II would enter the Sistine Chapel and shout at Charlton Heston’s Michelangelo up high on the scaffold, “When will you be done?” and Heston would shout back, “When I am finished!”
It wasn’t quite so dramatic as that, but I kept telling Dad that he wasn’t finished. He needed to do more. He had been working on it for months and was getting pretty tired of it, but as was his working nature, he just simply kept grinding on until he announced for the umpteenth time “I am finished!” And finally it was.
The painting “That We May Be Redeemed” by Harold I. Hopkinson is now hanging in the St. George Temple.
Now many years gone by and I have done my own version of “That We May Be Redeemed”. I have chosen to paint the same feeling of light and mood and have placed the Founding Fathers visiting Wilford Woodruff in a similar manner as is in my father’s painting. I decided that I liked Wilford Woodruff sitting naturally at a desk when George Washington addresses him. I used much of the same research but decided to pose new models for the most part. (I did find a couple of photos of me as a young man in 18th century costumes that I used). I pulled out my “artist license” at least once when I decided that the side burns that Wilford Woodruff usually wore were distracting and so I left them off.
My father passed away several years ago and so in my painting “That We May Be Redeemed” (as in my life) I am building on the gifts that my father gave me. Dad, thanks for everything, and if you are working on some great celestial mural, up on some celestial easle, with a few million celestial colors on the pallet, and you can wait for another three or four decades, then save a big section of canvas for me to paint and I’ll join you. If we decide to do this project again, you won’t have to have me pose, but perhaps we can go right to the source and have Wilford, George, Thomas, Ben and others don their costumes and pose while we paint a true “heavenly masterpiece”! But that is for later! Much, much later.
A few weeks ago I was in my old home town of Cody, Wyoming and stopped into see my friends John and Norma McDougal. There on their wall was a painting I did years ago for John titled Cody Social Club. John is that tough looking hombre in the center with his beautiful wife Norma standing at his shoulder. On the left is Bob Olsen, then in the center foreground is Dick Doerr. Bud Carpenter is to his right and Bob Merrill is on the far right. John still has his Thursday night poker night although most of the characters have changed.
In order to prepare to do this painting so many years ago, we all gathered in Old Trail Town (a museum town in Cody made of actual buildings from the late 1800s, all put together by Bob Edgar, an archeologist, historian and quick draw artist). We set up in the saloon where they put on my old costumes and promptly began a game of poker. Funny thing is these guys are all Church going men (usually) who don't drink (much) and so when I finished the painting and delivered it I pasted a cut out painting of milk and cookies on the poker table. It took everybody a few minutes to discover the joke. Unfortunately, since the milk and cookies were only taped on, they eventually fell off.
John was the high school football coach and long time mentor to many of the youth of Cody. The likeness in the painting is spot on. John has a face that says, "I don't take any crap!" but he is friendly, soft spoken and his wife Norma says he is a Saint. He'll growl a chuckle and say, "that's B.S.". John and Norma are great folks.
