The Artist Who Lived in Central Park

Artist Elise Bainbridge Hill Lived and Painted in Central Park Photo: Julie Glassberg/The New York Times/Redux They often found her painting. Birders remember entering the Ramble in Central Park on sunny days and seeing Elise Bainbridge Hill, a 63-year-old unhoused woman, working with watercolors and a coffee-cup-lid palette. “She was there at all hours,” Sandra Paci, a birder who used to work in art galleries, tells me. In recent years, Hill at times slept in a gazebo amid the overgrown woods. She spent her days feeding the birds and making art, creating striking paintings of animals and night skies, pieces of the city that few others really saw. “When you look at the works, the quality was extremely high,” Paci says. “She had a real feeling for nature.” Riding Down the Hill the Wrong Way; Central Park Bird Feeders; What Is That? Is It a Duck?; and Mother Raccoon and Young Descending the Cyclops Tree. Art: Elise Bainbridge Hill. Riding Down the Hill the Wrong Way; Central Park Bird Feeders; What Is That? Is It a Duck?; and Mother Raccoon and Young Descending the Cyclops Tree. ... Riding Down the Hill the Wrong Way; Central Park Bird Feeders; What Is That? Is It a Duck?; and Mother Raccoon and Young Descending the Cyclops Tree. Art: Elise Bainbridge Hill. On Sunday, September 27, Hill, also known as Francis Lee Rogers — and several other names, according to those who knew her — was found dead, violently killed in a case that is still being investigated for motive. (The NYPD arrested and charged a 36-year-old man, who was living at a shelter nearby, with murder and possession of a weapon.) Hill’s death brought an outpouring of grief. “She really did deserve to have an exhibition somewhere,” Paci says. Hill had a typical start for an artist. She arrived in the city in 1977 as a teenager, leaving a tumultuous home in New Jersey for an apartment on Avenue B, where the rent was $150. By the early ’90s, she worked at Show World Center, a Times Square strip club. She would bring her easel onto the stage to paint the girls performing. “She was a modern-day Toulouse-Lautrec,” says Karen Gehres, who made a documentary about Hill. After working in the club, Hill struggled. Her thinking grew paranoid. In 2001, after living in a converted air shaft across from Carnegie Hall, she was forced onto the streets. Still, Hill found ways to survive, and she never stopped painting. “She wasn’t a gimmick,” Gehres says. “She was a true artist. That was her life.” Paci has pitched the idea of an exhibition to the American Folk Art Museum, which sits across from the park. The Last NIMBY in a YIMBY Town Can a Rock Club Survive in North Brooklyn? What Will Become of the Ed Sullivan Theater? See All The Artist Who Lived in Central Park Your product is saved! You’ll receive emails when your saved products go on sale. Manage preferences.