This body of work of paintings, democratic multiples, and editioned woodcuts sprouted from a locust bean pod that I found while at an artist residency in Catalunya. It is rooted in medieval and Hispanic expressions of spirituality that recognize the importance of the natural world and the four elements.

Spirituality is a thread that runs through my work, and was early on expressed in a drawing of a smiley Jesus that I made when I was about six, and in an oil painting of a cloistered nun done in high school. I am still unable to explain the pull that the Virgin exerts on my imagination. I can say only that in some way it parallels my deep connection to the natural world.

“There is the recourse, certainly, of praying for intercession from an eternal world, but Zopp’s three depictions of the Virgin take the shape of beans, as if to situate the Madonna firmly within natural processes.” —from the catalog essay for Ground/Underground, Mary Joe Hughes, Author of The Move Beyond Form