Greta Hopkinson, wood sculptor and contemporary of Gertrude Hermes (1901–83), is now largely unknown but her work deserves recognition for its focus on liberating the tactile, sensual qualities inherent in wood.
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Greta was born in West Didsbury, Manchester in 1901. Her father was a British Engineer (designer of a shell propelled grappling hook used during WWI to remove barbed wire fences) and her mother an acclaimed Swedish singer. Greta went to Sandcotes School in Parkston, Dorset and then studied languages at Newnham College, Cambridge, becoming one of its youngest female graduates. For a while she was employed as Secretary to the Editor of the New Statesman, Clifford Dyce Sharp. She married a Doctor, Harry Hopkinson, in the 1920s and travelled Europe with him. After the War they lived on the Isle of Wight before retiring to Pine Cottage, a house on the edge of the New Forest and previously the home of Gordon Jacob, the well-known British composer. Greta Hopkinson died in the mid 1990s in Brockenhurst, Hampshire.
It wasn't until after the death of her husband that she focused attention on becoming a wood-carver. In the process of mastering traditional techniques and achieving proficiency to the point of producing realistic figures, she became increasingly certain that imposing shape and structure on the wood ran counter to its own beauty and organic form. Her work then took a more naturalistic turn. Living in the New Forest she had access to a wonderful source for her art and imagination and the dead wood she collected from the rivers and streams, of all shapes and sizes, was taken home for contemplation and working. Each piece would be cleaned, interrogated with carving tools and gradually evolved and enhanced using natural polishes until she had revealed its essence. One of her pieces was gifted to the Commonwealth Institute for the Blind - its tactical quality revealing both her artistic values and love of the wood itself.
In his review of Roger Deakin’s book, Wildwood: A Journey into the Trees, in The Independent, Hugh Thomson compared her work to that of modern sculptors Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy. (6 July 2007). Independent book review
In the early 1990s Greta’s work was exhibited, in the New Forest, alongside that of Royal Academy painter Barry Peckham, whose subjects include the Solent and Hampshire.