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The 63-year-old artist, who was unhoused, was known as the “Grandma Moses of Central Park” for her various depictions of its fauna and flora.
Francis Lee Rogers, a 63-year-old artist whose neighbors and subjects were the birds of Central Park, died on Sunday, September 27. Law enforcement sources told the New York Post that Rogers, who was unhoused, had been found beaten to death under the gazebo she called home, though the New York Police Department could not confirm the individual’s identity to Hyperallergic due to the ongoing investigation.
Rogers had become a fixture in the park as an avid birdwatcher and painter of its various locations, particularly in the Ramble, the heavily wooded section she frequented most often.
“We used to call her the Grandma Moses of Central Park,” Robert “Birding Bob” DeCandido told Hyperallergic in a phone interview, comparing the artist to the renowned folk landscape painter. “But she probably wouldn’t want all this sympathy. She didn’t call attention to herself.”
The artist reached Central Park through a difficult path, having gone by multiple names throughout her life. She was known as Elise Bainbridge Hill when she was the subject of Karen Gehres’s 2007 documentary Begging Naked, in which she recounted running away from home as a teen, surviving as a sex worker, persevering through a heroin addiction, and finding space for her art in between.
