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From poetry to paintings Artist draws inspiration from the poetry of Emily Dickinson
by Justin Paprocki
Ellen Beinhorn opened a volume of Emily Dickinson poetry a few years ago and began seeing faces.
Faces of sorrow, agony, grief. Bemused faces. Perplexed faces.
She began painting -- line drawings given depth with charcoal; the canvas colored with oil pastels to determine the mood.
Everything is in the face, the 86-year-old artist says. The emotion captured in a poem is the same emotion displayed on a face.
Over several years she created dozens of faces, each based on a Dickinson poem. Earlier this year, Dancingfish Press in North Carolina published a selection of her portraits in a collection called "Emily and Me." Each face accompanies the poem that inspired it.
"The poems mean as much today, if not more," she said.
"When (Dickinson) talks about the soul, she talks about something tangible."
Beinhorn and her husband, Leo, split their time between a house in Riverbend in Okatie and one in North Carolina, where she's the curator of a gallery.
She had been a sculptor for half her life, finding professional success out of molding portraits. She still sculpts and creates art and poetry just about every day. The creation of the book was more than just a study of Dickinson's work. To her, it was a mental challenge, a way to explore her creativity as she ages deeper into her golden years.
"With older people, we think of things we can't do instead of what we can do," she said. "My thrust is to interest people in something that they think may be beyond themselves."
The collection already has garnered some attention. Her book was presented at the Emily Dickinson International Society's 20th anniversary celebration held in the poet's hometown of Amherst, Mass., in August. The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute allowed her to present a class based on the contents of the book. Two of her students' poems are published in the back of "Emily and Me."
Beinhorn plans to publish more, including her own volume of poetry. An example:
