Elizabeth Bishop's (Visual) Art

The poet painted, too, and her work is rather interesting. The painting above is called "Olivia," and it is a small watercolor and gouache rendering of a church of weathered wood on Olivia Street in Key West.

William Benton has written a slim book called Exchanging Hats about Elizabeth Bishop's art, as well as this profile in The New York Times Book Review. Here is an excerpt:

Meyer Shapiro, the distinguished art critic, said she “writes poems with a painter’s eye.” From “The Man-Moth” to “The Moose,” the deceptive conventionality of Bishop’s poetry is part of what makes it so original, and even subversive. She was the fascinating outsider at the masked ball in a company of congenial, if often over-bred, bores. She opened and admired their jeweled music boxes and, with the real daring of upward mobility, let herself be mistaken for one of them—by herself even. Hence that half-modest, half-elitist lilt when she protests that her paintings are, “…Not Art—NOT AT ALL.”

Comments

[Justin Hamm]

I didn't know this. "Olivia" kind of reminds me of a James Castle piece a little bit. Do you know his stuff?

[Anna Clark]

Not at all. But you inspired a Google search, and he looks pretty great ... if you have any particularly solid leads for a Castle newbie to begin to discover him, please share!