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Jeff Hoppis was raised on a small cattle ranch in Eastern Washington. With a

creek running through, he loved to travel the creek fishing with his pet skunk

Rascal, building tree forts and grass teepees.

 

He painted and sketched all throughout his childhood, mostly Cowboys and

Indians. After his high school years, Jeff toured with a rock band as their lead

singer, all the while doing what he loved most, artwork.

 

After touring for several years he left the band and started working as an

artist for

a photography studio. He worked his way to the top of his field and gained national notoriety. He won multiple national awards in photo retouching, including; Best Oil Coloring, Best Black and White Restoration, Best Color Print Enhancement, The Fuji Masterpiece Award for Artist of the Year in Western States Photo Enhancement, as well as Artist of the Year for 3 consecutive years in Washington State, in the days when everything was done by hand. After many years, he went to work for the movie industry, enhancing and colorizing video box covers. That is when he advanced his skill level using the airbrush to colorize the black and white images. After years of working with MGM, Paramount Pictures and Disney, he became a freelance artist, creating beautiful pieces in many subject areas and showing in galleries in the United States and Canada.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He has always been interested in the Native American culture. Their faces show everything, their pride, their fierceness, their strife and struggles, all portrayed in images with deep emotion, movement and color. He is particularly a fan of Chief Sitting Bull who cared deeply for his people and was concerned that the younger people were losing their culture and proud history.

 

​                      One day Jeff was having lunch, and

                     asked the waitress if she was from a

                     particular Indian Nation. She said she

                     was, so he asked her if she could tell

                     him any famous Chiefs from her

                     nation. She thought about it and said

“Chief Joseph” Jeff said “Thank you”, knowing she had been mistaken as he was from another tribe. He realized that the knowledge of the history and the culture of the tribes were indeed slipping away. It was at that

moment that he decided to start painting true Native American Heroes to share . “I feel these are some of the most important forgotten men and women in American history. Their faces tell their dramatic story”.

 

Today he paints the traditional portraits as well as the modern day powwow dances, regalia, people and events, as they are an important continuation of the Native American culture. Jeff strives to portray this as realistically

as possible using the forgotten art form

of airbrush and using his personally developed techniques, including painting first in black and white undercoating and then colorizing it using an airbrush.