Four couples and their art at Barnwell: painting, sculpture exhibit on display until Mar 15

'Untitled Self-Portrait' , Talbot Hopkins, 2009
Originally uploaded by trudeau

The Couples show at Barnwell, curated by Freda Powell and Sharon Teel Bennett, brings together the work of 4 pairs of journeyman regional artists.

From Monroe are painters Bob Snider and former Shreveporter Linda Ward Snider, aka Linda Louisiana. From Shreveport are photographer Bob Horne and painter Judy Horne. Also from Shreveport are painter-sculptor Don Alexander and painter Shirlene Alexander. Also part of the group is painter-photographer Talbot Hopkins,a professional portraitist, and Robert Trudeau, multi-media documentarian.

All have considerable stories to tell and lengthy backgrounds in art. You'll see artist statements next to the work but it would be hard to find the space to say all that might be said about their artistic histories and futures.

If you can attend the reception this afternoon, Sun, Feb 1, 2 to 4 pm, you will see a bit of the story.

Perhaps typical of the couples, the artistic relationship of Talbot and Robert has been hammered out - not easily - over the years.

I am a constant sketcher and a person who delights in irony and the offbeat. Conventional beauty mostly bores me. I adore rough texture and surprises and try to capture it quickly, Talbot appreciates those things but has a gift for seeing, photographing and painting the beautiful things around us. She does so painstakingly.

As a result, she has made a career of art. Her portraits are meticulous and almost photo-realistic. People will wait years for her to get around to their portraits and pay well for them. She has a gift for portraiture.

Me, I want to do ink sketches and then, somehow, turn them into videos with self-produced music in the background. I am driven to document the artistic people and moments around me.

Talbot's still lifes are jewel-like expressions of her vision. She loves the classic rendering, in oil or graphite or acrylic, of small groups of objets. Some of her compositions are manipulated by hand under shifting light; some she finds with her roving and magical eye.

While we share an aesthetic vision, our styles don't easily mesh. You'll see as much at Barnwell or at these web sites: talbothopkinsart.blogspot.com and trudeauart.blogspot.com.