I am Kaci King-Hopp­man. Self-taught abstract artist, cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Tyler. As a preach­ers daugh­ter born in Ver­non and raised In Plain­view Texas, I con­sid­er the great high plains as my nat­ur­al home. We moved to Tyler from Abi­lene in June 2019 so my hus­band and I could be clos­er to his ail­ing moth­er. I began paint­ing in 2007. At the time we had no space in our first home, an ear­ly 1910s, small, two sto­ry cot­tage. So my hus­band made me a space and I began learn­ing. My focus real­ly took off in 2017 when per­son­al life events changed my per­spec­tive and I began to focus my art to help me deal with my men­tal and phys­i­cal health and, well, life in general.

I am an intro­vert. But I love peo­ple and a crowd. I find paint­ing is ther­a­py for me. It allows me to freely express my emo­tions. I can’t always ver­bal­ize what I’m think­ing. But through paint­ing, I can.

The best way I have found to describe my craft is a quote by D.W. Winnicott:

“Artists are peo­ple dri­ven by the ten­sion between the desire to com­mu­ni­cate and the desire to hide.”