Eddie Lopez

In another time and place, Eddie Lopez might have tackled the Sistine Chapel had Michelangelo not gotten there first.

For this well-known artist, his art is his whole world.

Lopez says, “I guess it’s all I’ve ever known. Even as a kid I was always drawing. Always. I’ve never had a job. This is all I’ve ever done. Except being in the service -- I guess that was a job,” he says with a grin.

Lopez was born in Jerome, Arizona, June 1, 1943, into a family of five children. Lopez’s father, who worked in the mines, was from many generations of “hard-working” men. He never understood Eddie’s desire to be an artist.

“My mom, she liked it, but my dad always wanted me to do something else,” he says. “He only understood a job where you punch a clock.”

But Lopez was driven by his art.

Lopez’s art education at the University of Phoenix was interrupted after two years by the Vietnam War. He enlisted in the Navy and served four years, which included three tours in Vietnam.

When he returned, he completed his schooling at Arizona School of Art.

“It was very old fashioned,” Lopez recalls. “It was in an old house. The instructor really wanted you to learn how to measure and do the basics. We couldn’t do anything for half a year but sketches every day. We had models twice a week, head and shoulder portraits on Friday – and did this for three years. Not many people graduated.

“The instructor was 80-something at the time. Shortly after that, he died. But I don’t think I had anything to do with it, particularly,” he adds with a twinkle.

Commissioned art has kept Lopez busy all his life. In the mid-‘70s – as he was launching his early career -- he painted a portrait of former Arizona Governor Raul Castro, for free, in a trade-out for publicity.

“I had a one-man show for a week in the State Capitol,” he says. “I was the only one ever to do that.”

The painting, which was revealed at the Governor’s Ball, still hangs in the Arizona State Capitol.

Lopez works in all media, including oil, watercolor, pastel, charcoal and pen and ink, sculpting, and every fine art and commercial subject imaginable, from landscapes to portraits and abstracts.

He has painted murals in upscale homes all over the Valley, as well as in restaurants, bars and businesses.

In one home many years ago, on a whim, he painted hidden items in the mural for the grandchildren to find, including an angel in the clouds, a butterfly on the ground and a ladybug on the pond. He told the owner he could paint them out if she didn’t want them, but she liked it so much, she asked him to leave them there.

Lopez started teaching art classes more than 35 years ago, when he had been at the Arizona School of Art only a few months.

“The instructor would get calls to go somewhere to do art demonstrations for large groups, and would send me instead,” he remembers. “I had to learn how to draw and paint quickly, mostly with live models, and I had to talk the whole time while I did it, because even a minute of silence is too long. You have to keep their attention. I was making a live painting in front of them and had to talk, answer questions and paint all at the same time. So I would throw in stories and jokes.”

Lopez discovered he really liked doing the demonstrations, and was soon teaching classes with equal enjoyment.

“I like communication and public speaking, but mostly I just like people,” he says.

He says he also learns much from the students by teaching them, and it keeps him growing as well.

Lopez has a method for teaching his students how to draw and paint in a logical sequence that simplifies it.

“I’ve got this formulized system that really works great,” he says. “I absolutely guarantee everybody does portraits on the first day.”

“One lady said to me, ‘I thought you had to be gifted or something to be an artist,’” he relates, “and I told her no, you can learn because I can teach you the techniques. I can’t teach you to be interested. But I can teach you anything I can do.”

He admits, “I could just stop everything and just do paintings and probably be living out of a mansion somewhere, but I really enjoy teaching so much, and I learn so much myself, that it’s kind of hard to just drop it.”

Lopez starts lessons with new students by demonstrating two simple methods for drawing a face. The first starts with an outline of the head and working in from there.

He calls the second method, “The Nose Knows.”

“You just start with the nose and then you find the level of the eye by the nose, then you work out from the nose,” he says. “It’s an easy and quick way to teach people this. They can relate the nose to everything.”

After teaching his students how to proportion the face, he teaches them how to draw different facial features such as the ears, eyes and lips.

He then supplements these lessons by showing them pages with many examples of features to use for practice, or by placing sculpted models on the table.

Lopez says he never teaches anything new without first demonstrating the techniques for his students, so they understand what he means when he instructs them.

“He makes it look so easy,” one student comments.

Lopez, who takes genuine delight in seeing his students blossom into artists through the simplified method he has developed, says matter-of-factly, “It is easy. I’ve got it all broken down. I’ve been doing this for 35 years.”

Once they have completed the basic program, Lopez encourages his students to try any and all media that interest them. At any given point, all the students in a class may be working on different media in different stages. It is for this reason he keeps his classes small – no more than eight -- so he can give them all the individual attention and instruction they need.

Lopez teaches five days a week at various facilities. The entertaining art instructor has had to resist requests to add more days to his schedule.

“I just don’t have any more days,” he says regretfully. “I wish I did. But Saturdays and Sundays are the two days I paint, and also in the evenings.”

The open-ended classes are held at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Fountain Hills, Rio Verde Community Center, Tonto Verde Club House, and locations in Peoria and Phoenix.

Lopez cannot be contacted by phone by hopeful students. He actually doesn’t own a phone.

He explains, with his quick humor, “I don’t like them. “They’re kind of spooky. I keep hearing voices.”

In truth, the artist’s serious dedication to his fine art leaves little room for the outside world when he is working in his own studio.

“When I work I just go into a trance. I actually forget meals, forget everything,” he admits. “So you can see why it’s not conducive to my concentration to be interrupted all the time by a phone ringing.”

His students often tell him that if he had a phone they would have called and asked questions about their work.

“I tell them that’s why I don’t have a phone,” he says with a laugh.

“But anyone who has ever wanted to get in touch with me has found me,” he points out.

Lopez says if he had to offer some advice to artists he would tell them, “The two toughest things an artist has to learn is how to start working – and then how to stop after you get started.”

“I worked my life around art, not art around my life,” Lopez says.

“Always, before sleep, I ask myself two questions. The first is, ‘Are you in a good place tonight?’ and then, ‘Did you do anything today you didn’t want to?’”

Humbly content, Lopez says, “I pretty much lived my life the way I wanted.”

 This artist was featured June 2007