“In Isabel Bishop’s paintings the ambiguity of space matches the ambiguity of content; the form and the content are one, mutually interdependent, with the form liberating the content, and the content determining the form. The prosaic figures are poetic; the deep space is mysteriously shallow; the solid forms are translucent; what moves is also stationary. She is a painter of paradox.
Bishop’s art transfigures the present into the permanent. Perpetually new, the cycle of human existence and desires is a revolving mirror connecting the past with the present. Of the moment and not of the moment. Isabel Bishop remains continually contemporary. The integrity and stead- fastness of her vision have produced a personal, contemplative art that has profound meaning for an uncontemplative time. It remains for those who look at paintings to watch carefully as the truths this artist has to tell are slowly unfolded.“
– Karl Lunde
“Bishop used a laborious process of preparation for a painting. First, the masonite panel was treated with as many as eight coats of gesso, front and back. She borrowed a technique used by Rubens and painted a ground of random horizontal gray stripes made up of gelatin, powdered charcoal, and white lead, thus creating the transparent, vibrating surface she needed for her concept of figures in a weblike, mobile environment. The drawing was then added in pencil or ink and black or umber tempera. Then varnish was applied over it. Tone upon tone was then overlaid on this tacky ground, the striped underpainting remaining visible through the layers of oil. In some cases, to further balance light and shadow, Bishop applied fine random horizontal and vertical lines, that look almost like stitching, on the surface of the finished paintings. Enlarged photostats of the etchings, tacked to the easel, held Bishop to her original ‘metaphor’, the visionary spark that had set the painting off in her mind.”
–Helen Yglesias
“Cezanne once said his aim was to make Impressionism as solid and durable as the art of museums. In her own way, Isabel Bishop has sought and found a comparable solidity with a comparable independence of means. Her people have a moving, inward quality, although that may be a subjective response on my part. Beyond argument is their monumental existence–in terms of both humanity and art.”
– John I.H. Baur
