ANDREW LAMAR HOPKINS (1977 - )
The New Orleans Home of two Confirmed Bachelors #2. Acrylic on canvas board, 2014. 347x457 mm; 13x18 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower left. Signed, titled and dated in ink, verso.Provenance: commissioned by the owner, private collection, New York.Poised in the painting are two elegant bachelors seated in a 19th-century sitting room basking in daytime attire amongst the fine and decorative arts of the period. Andrew LeMar Hopkins has created a fictionalized scene, not of continental France but Creole New Orleans. Inspired by a research-based practice, he has constructed a world where two men could be confirmed bachelors or more. Incorporating architectural elements of 18th century French Quarter and designs from antiquity, Hopkins weaves together a neo-classical world that subtly alludes to the their queer life together.Experienced as a professional antiquarian, Hopkins is a self-taught artist born in Mobile, Alabama. Currently living and working in New Orleans, Andrew LeMar Hopkins creates historical fantasies of Creole people in the 19th century. Through research, exploration and his imagination, he creates maximalist paintings that are detailed with every possible aspect of Creole life. Working in a continuum, he explores the past while tweaking it to involve the viewer in intimate vignettes, injecting overtly homosocial scenarios or overt references to queer culture. He uses his identity as a Black, queer man living in New Orleans to revisit, recontextualize, and bring histories that have been lost to us. In Addition, his parallel practice is as a drag queen; his alter ego, Désirée Joséphine Duplantier, is a grande dame empress from New Orleans.