Brendan Hopkins
Tulsa, OK
My name is Brendan Hopkins, and I’m a watercolor portrait artist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I began painting in 2021 and have since created over 120 pieces, exploring themes of memory, grief, and identity. My work is rooted in emotional honesty and often draws on personal experiences, archival imagery, and visual symbolism to examine what we carry and what we leave behind.
I’m a watercolor portrait artist exploring themes of memory, emotion, and what it means to hold onto a moment. My process is intuitive and rooted in reflection. I begin with reference images, then reshape and soften them until the portrait feels less like a replica and more like a lingering emotion. I’m drawn to the way watercolor resists control. Its unpredictability mirrors the emotional terrain I’m trying to explore: delicate, raw, and often unresolved. Lately, I’ve started painting borders around my portraits, mimicking the frame of a Polaroid. That small act of framing changed how I approached the work. It gave each piece a sense of containment, as if I’m not just painting a face but capturing a memory that is already starting to fade. The borders have become part of the storytelling: subtle, symbolic, and deeply personal. My vision is to create work that feels both intimate and distant. Portraits that invite pause and reflection. I hope each piece offers viewers a quiet moment to recognize something in themselves or in someone they have lost track of. Not loud or literal just quietly familiar.
