Anne Elliott Paintings: Painting Poetry by Anne Elliott

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gallery 1 - painting poetry

Some lines of poetry seem to stay with us and to inform our experience of different situations and events. They resonate powerfully at first reading or hearing, perhaps capturing our deepest feelings, reviving memories of intense longing, hope, pain, revelation, or illuminating previously unexamined incidents or truths. “My words echo thus in your mind,” T.S.Eliot suggests in Four Quartets.

I have heard Eliot’s words, and those of other poets, doing just that, echoing in my mind, while painting. A favorite line could occur to me while working on a painting or looking at a finished painting. Sometimes I have consciously sought a visual image that would capture those lines. But my images are not illustrations. They are personal responses.

I am particularly fond of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. I think this is because, when I first read it, and many times subsequently, I was feeling lost and confused, trying to make sense of my experience. Four Quartets seemed to address my condition with a compelling immediacy. I came to know the poem well (please don’t ask me to discourse on the poem’s meaning – my concerns are those of the seeker, not the scholar) and many passages have become my companions through life. You will see my representations of some of them in this show.

Other poets whose work has had significance for me are Sharon Olds, Shakespeare, Claire Beynon, Nanao Sakaki, and Izumi Shikibu. I have conversations with them in my mind.

Anne Elliott

Gallery 1: Click the thumbnail photo on the left to view the enlarged photo on the right.