Novelist, short story writer, and avian aficionado Flannery O’Connor has gained a new degree of complexity after dozens of paintings and other illustrations attributed to her were discovered in 2023. In celebration of what would have been her hundredth birthday, O’Connor’s alma mater Georgia College and State University (GCSU) in her hometown of Milledgeville presents 70 of her recovered artworks, rounding out an already influential literary legacy.
“Most people know who Flannery O’Connor was; now they know that she was also a painter,” Seth Walker, vice president of University Advancement and a key organizer of O’Connor’s centennial event, said in a statement to Hyperallergic. “Studying her visual art adds a whole new dimension to her writing.”
The discovery of dozens of paintings, illustrations, and block prints by O’Connor that had been squirreled away by family and friends came to light in 2023, shedding light on an art practice hidden from public view. Oil paintings on wood tile, wood-burned illustrations, and even a self-portrait bring both clarity and mystique to O’Connor’s legacy. Her artwork was reportedly hidden by her loved ones out of fear that it would interfere with recognition for her achievements as a writer.
Described as a savant of Southern Gothic literature, O’Connor is best known for eerie short stories like “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1952) that level with a handful of novels including Wise Blood (1952), all dealing with Christianity, disability, race, morality and ethics, crime, and and the Civil War, among other related themes. Born on March 25, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, O’Connor moved to her mother’s family home in Milledgeville in 1940, shortly after her father was diagnosed with lupus. Now known as Andalusia Farm, the home is now a National Historic Landmark owned and stewarded by the university.
O’Connor graduated from GCSU in 1945 with an undergraduate degree in social sciences, having spent her college career as a contributing cartoonist for the student newspaper. She earned a journalism scholarship with the University of Iowa and soon transferred to the esteemed Iowa Writer’s Workshop program, where she made the full pivot into fiction. O’Connor returned to Milledgeville in 1952 after receiving her lupus diagnosis and spent the last 12 years of her life with her mother in Andalusia Farm, writing fastidiously, and caring for her many beloved peafowl. She died in 1964 at the young age of 39.
On March 25, the collection of 70 artworks was reunited and displayed in full for the first time at GSCU before it moved to the Andalusia Interpretive Center, which is operated by the university. The exhibition, titled Hidden Treasures and on view through early 2026, consists of O’Connor’s artwork and other personal objects and artifacts that haven’t been shown to the public before.
In 2020, conversations about O’Connor’s legacy arose with regards to her private versus public attitudes toward Black people and the Civil Rights movement as well as her flippant use of the N-word in letters. Now, two recovered portrait paintings featuring a Black woman and a young Black girl as subjects add another layer to the conversation that has yet to be interpreted. In addition to developments regarding this dialogue, Hidden Treasures includes O’Connor’s capturing of her rural surroundings and Southern architecture with an impressionistic flair, paintings of her birds and other farm animals, still lifes, charmingly gawky portraiture, and even a self-portrait.
Dr. Farrell O’Gorman, co-trustee of the O’Connor Charitable Trust and chair of the English Department at Belmont Abbey College, told Hyperallergic in an email that the exhibition had been received with “great interest and enthusiasm.”
“Hundreds of people came to see the paintings in Milledgeville,” O’Gorman continued. “I fully expect that conversations about them will be occurring at scholarly conferences on O’Connor’s work in the United States and in Europe during this centennial year.”
“At the same time, they are clearly attracting the attention of a broader audience, one that goes well beyond the scholarly community,” she said.
