Michael Hopkins calls his 11 small, haunting, eerily transparent works at Navta Schulz X-ray paintings, and though some are ambiguous, others do suggest bones, perhaps a rib cage or joints. Fragile, strangely glowing presences, these untitled pieces in white ink on slate hover before the eye like ghosts. Begun in early 2004, they were inspired in part by hospital jobs Hopkins had in college two decades ago, cleaning up after surgeries and as a physical therapy technician. “That really had an influence on me–you’re so close to the figure. We did ultrasounds and back rubs, we put hot packs on people. I was young, at the peak of healthiness, and it made me more aware of the human body in all its variations.”
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Hopkins describes the first 30 or so of the works he did in this line as “pretty X-ray-like.” Wanting to explore other possibilities–he says he generally hopes the viewer “has no words” about his art–he started applying washes to soften the lines. Two instructors at the first of the three colleges he attended, Ben Dallas and Ken Dahlberg at Harper College in Palatine, were the first to show him the importance of a mark in itself. Before that, he says, “I had only thought of the mark as something that represented a person or a tree.” Many series of drawings later–including geometrical abstractions, images that suggested the figure, and acrylic drawings on plastic inspired by Asian calligraphy–a friend suggested he use slate. After some failed flower paintings, he thought of X-rays.
