With nature and animal art, I try to look beyond the expected and do something a little off, a little grating perhaps, so the viewer becomes involved in the story. My animals live in the real world where horses get burrs in their manes and domestic cats are ferocious carnivores.

Margi Hopkins earned her BFA from Denison University and spent summers taking classes at The De Cordova Museum, The Boston Museum of Fine Art and the Massachusetts College of Art.

In 2001 she started Pepper Portraits while working as a veterinary assistant. Her devotion to wild and domestic animals, as well as their habitat, is evident in her paintings and the various causes to which she donates time and art.
Her subject matter is whatever allows her to explore composition, lighting and message.  She has built a reputation for her story telling and unusual medium, which includes solvents with colored pencil on fabric surfaces. 

Margi submits to at least three major juried exhibitions annually, winning many accolades and exhibits in galleries, universities and museums countrywide. Her work has graced the front cover of JAVMA twice and is published in art books such as North Light Books STROKES OF GENIUS. Of the many purchases made by collectors here and abroad, Margi is most proud that her original “Who Recued Whom” depicting an elderly gentleman with his newly adopted Jack Russell, was purchased by the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine Library in honor of their rescue work.

Margi is a signature member of the Colored Pencil Society of America, a member of Masterworks For Nature and an Associate Member of The Society of Animal Artists.  Originals and Giclees are available at Row House Gallery, Milford OH and Page Waterman Gallery, Wellesley MA.