You’re sitting in a dimly lit room at 11pm, staring into the abyss, questioning all your life decisions. Student in a haven’t-started-the-reading-9am-deadline conundrum or protagonist of an Edward Hopper painting? It’s hard to tell. Cinematic, lonely, and beautiful: the inimitable Edward Hopper explores human existence with an intense honesty through his melancholic oil paintings. In his surreal scenes of human life, Hopper’s paintbrush is possessed with a dreamlike quality. His work is like a glimpse of a dream that you can’t quite remember. Or like watching an entire film in a single frame, hence why he has been an inspiration for filmmakers such as David Lynch, Ridley Scott, and Alfred Hitchcock. There are countless ways to digest Hoppers oeuvre, yet, in all his works, a strong sense of intrusion lingers. Hopper is keen to highlight that we are an outsider looking in. His paintings awaken the senses – a protruding sense of silence, we wonder what the room smells like or how cold the air is. We, as the viewer, know we shouldn’t really be there, but we don’t feel unwelcome. In fact, we are completely ignored. The perspective Hopper gives us does not feel voyeuristic, but simply observational.

“In his surreal scenes of human life, Hopper’s paintbrush is possessed with a dreamlike quality”

Sometimes when I’m sitting at a dark desk in the middle of a bookshelf, with no idea which level of the UL I’m on, I feel somewhat like an Edward Hopper character. The infinite corridors of the University Library exist between a beautiful Hopper oil painting and a scene from The Shining. Combinations of shadowy book cases, warm bulbs hidden in cream lamps, and blue natural light streaming through the intermittent windows remind me of the warm and cool ambiguity within Hopper’s body of work. Many locations in Cambridge evoke something dreamlike and Hopperesque. Walking down Free School Lane at night, lit only by orange-tinged street lights. Leaving the library at midnight after endless hours, to see colourfully stained-glass windows punctuating a pitch-black night sky through tired eyes.

Pockets of rich colour peeking through the darkness of the night is a quintessential Hopper quality. I see this emulated everywhere in contemporary media, for example almost all of Richard Hawley’s album covers look like live-action Hopper paintings. His lyrics echo ideas of isolation which are ever-present in Hopper’s compositions. In Coles Corner, Hawley sings "I’m going downtown where there’s people, my loneliness hangs in the air. No one there real waiting for me. No smile, no flower, no air." If Hopper’s characters could talk, I believe they’d speak in Hawley’s lyrics.

“Sometimes when I’m sitting at a dark desk in the middle of a bookshelf, with no idea which level of the UL I’m on, I feel somewhat like an Edward Hopper character”

His portraits often display individuals totally entranced by their individual activities or conversely engrossed in nothingness. Soir Bleu is a particular favourite of mine, as it illustrates what it feels like to pursue any new creative endeavour. In all seriousness, this work is certainly an anomaly as Hopper does not often visually emphasise the feeling of otherness and alienation so patently. This work’s clown protagonist sits at an outdoor bar amongst a mixed group of well-dressed, well-to-do socialites, and working men. An obvious metaphor for being an outsider, Hopper takes it a step further by mirroring the exact pose, proportions, and angle of the clown to the man on the left sitting on a different table, compositionally separated by the pillar between them – maybe this mirrors a life the clown figure could have had? Or perhaps the clown is a physical manifestation of the man’s inner self?

The multi-figural compositions provoke even more questions than the singular portraits, as there is an overwhelming sense of tension and silence within them. In some ways it reminds me of the dynamics of a library, each person getting on with their own tasks yet we all share a combined quietness. Hopper’s world is different to our own because of his injection of bold, brash colours – everything looks smoother, visually pleasing, and makes the monotony of everyday life more palatable. Hopper makes the mundane beautiful. When overwhelmed by academic stress, exhaustion, and endless assignments, take a walk around Cambridge at night, and remind yourself what a dreamlike place we are in. Don’t let the beautiful feel mundane.

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