Norwood MacGilvary described Isolation: This painting suggested a musical compostion which was given the same title (Isolation), composed by J. Vic O'Brien, head of the Music Department of Carnegie Institute of Technology, and played by Symphony Orchestra over N.B.C., Spring of 1936.
Pittsburg, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Twenty-six canvases by Members of the Art Faculty, 1938
Harvey Gaul, Exhibit Opens of Works of Tech Faculty Artists, The Pittsburgh Sunday Post, 1938: Norwood MacGilvary is again anagogical, allegorical and in this medium he is surpassing. "Isolation" gives us a Boecklinesque solemnity, almost a mordaunt note relieved and hung together with a rainbow. Joseph J Cloud, Show Paintings at Museum, The Pitsburgh Press, 1938: Norwood H. MacGilvray has three rythmic and pensive canvases. "Isolation" has, except for the rainbow, a subject which might have attracted. Rockwell Kent, a barren rock on a rockbound sea. But MacGilvray endows it with his own mystic quality ...