V. Hopkins
A Farm Home, by V. Hopkins
Back of the painting by V. Hopkins
A Farm Home
V. Hopkins
1982
Acrylic on canvas, 7.75 × 7 in. (framed 9 × 8.25 in.)
A Farm Home is a small-format acrylic painting signed “V. Hopkins ’82” on the front. The title, medium, and detailed location notes are handwritten on the back of the canvas.
The reverse identifies the subject as a farm home located approximately two miles south of the Haakenson home and ten miles west of Berwyn Corner, Alberta. According to the inscription, the structure was built by James Radcliffe when he homesteaded the land. The note further states that Radcliffe later returned to the Isle of Man and died in 1923.
No additional biographical information about the artist has been identified. The painting was purchased at a Value Village location in Sherwood Park, Alberta, in 2023.
What draws me to this painting is how carefully its history is preserved by hand. Even without external records, the back of the canvas carries precise geographic markers, a builder’s name, and a brief life trajectory—enough to anchor the image to a specific place and person.
Paintings like this often function as quiet acts of record-keeping. The structure itself may no longer exist, but here it remains named, located, and remembered. The artist’s decision to include these details suggests an intention beyond decoration: to hold onto local knowledge that might otherwise disappear.
As a collector, I’m interested in works where the object becomes its own archive. When formal documentation is absent, the painting itself carries the story. Preserving it is a way of keeping those fragments of regional history intact—exactly as they were passed down, written carefully on the back, and entrusted to the future.
