Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

This poem speaks to the eternal rebel in me, the part of me that sees itself outside the rest of society. I have always been attracted to the melancholy.

Painted especially for the 3 Poets show, I wanted this painting to show that feeling of not belonging yet longing to have another who belongs with you. All the while fearing that society would find a way to excommunicate the two of you. I was so taken by the one picture of Emily Dickinson I could find, and tried to make my gothic girls have that “turn of the century” feeling. I wanted to portray loneliness, and despair with a lasting humour underneath it all.

One reviewer wrote, "Ms. Hunt's style can best be described as, nouveau retro." I am inspired by all things kitsch: pin up girls, big-eyed children, pity puppies and tiki bars. These vintage things inspire my work, go through my mental filter and emerge, reshaped in a modern style. It reflects not only my inspiration but also my personality...delightfully unpretentious.

Emily Dickinson was an American lyrical poet, and an obsessively private writer -- only seven of her some 1800 poems were published during her lifetime. Dickinson withdrew from social contact at the age of 23 and devoted herself in secret into writing.

Dickinson's works have had considerable influence on modern poetry. Her frequent use of dashes, sporadic capitalization of nouns, off-rhymes, broken metre, unconventional metaphors have contributed her reputation as one of the most innovative poets of 19th-century American literature. Later feminist critics have challenged the popular conception of the poet as a reclusive, eccentric figure, and underlined her intellectual and artistic sophistication.