About the Blog
Hopper’s America is a road trip into art history, through the heart of America. I left medicine to drive America’s two lane roads, to see all of Edward Hopper’s pictures in person, from California to Boston, Sarasota to Minnesota.
I found Hopper oils, watercolors and etchings scattered across 70 museums and private collections in 57 cities. Each Hopper picture has a unique story of how it got to where it is today. I traced those stories back to the collector or curator who fell in love with each picture. I got to know about them, their foibles, their art collections (from minuscule to massive), and why they loved Edward Hopper.
Edward Hopper was an outsider. To understand him requires an outsider’s perspective. As an Australian growing up in America, I always felt different. My identity was as confused as my accent. As a doctor with no formal arts training, my relationship with Hopper’s work is founded on emotion, as it is for so many Hopper fans. Starting out, I had no preconceived notions. All I knew was that for me, and many others, Hopper defines America.
Edward Hopper is misunderstood. Pigeonholed as a realist, Hopper was in fact the first true modernist, shaping Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Watching people from afar, he saw not loneliness but the intimate humanity of modern American life. His searching light found beauty in the mundane, meaning in the everyday.
About the Author
Writer and doctor Jim Newcombe was born in Papua New Guinea, grew up in Washington, D.C. and has lived in Australia since the age of eighteen. He has traveled to 40 countries and every United State except Idaho and Michigan.
Jim studied medicine in Sydney and since graduating has specialized in pediatric infectious diseases. He has acted as a medical story advisor to the Australian network TV shows ‘House Husbands’ and ‘Gallipoli’, published in scientific peer-reviewed journals, and is an award-winning poet.
