Grandma Moses Painting Sold for 100K

Grandma Moses

One article title reads, "How To Write 5,000 Words An Hour." Another reads, "Are These the Last Days of the NFL?" And then I look at some of the feeds on Medium and read, "(Why) America's Collapsing at Light Speed" by a blogger who gets thousands of claps by near daily essays like "How Capitalism Turned America Soviet" and "Why A Divided America Is Collapsing."

The first headline, which I believe I saw on Medium last night, feels preposterous. That would be 83 words a minute, or 1.3 words a second. Assuming all your words were five letters on average, you'd have to type letters at a rate of one every .26 seconds. Of course you can't leave out the space bar between words, so this gives you .23 seconds per character (including spaces), and the hope that your brain can generate a stream of thousands of words an hour without ever having to think.

The second headline above, from this morning's Washington Post, almost made me look. But when in the blink of an eye I learn that America itself is heading for a fast collapse I decide not to worry about the collapse of the NFL. It's doubtful that the NFL will survive the collapse of America, though one never knows. Football fans are pretty avid at this time of year.

In light of all this trauma a story story about Grandma Moses seems like small potatoes (which our garden produced in abundance this year.)

"Never Too Late To Start" Department

Public domain reproduction of one of her paintings.

I saw this story in the Art Daily last week. A painting by Grandma Moses fetched $100,000 big ones in an art auction earlier this year. Art critics have labeled her work Folk Art. Or Naive Art. Essentially she was self-taught and unschooled, simply enjoyed painting.

The Wikipedia page on Grandma Moses begins like this:

September 07, 1860. Anna Mary Robertson Moses (September 7, 1860 - December 13, 1961), known by her nickname Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78 and is often cited as an example of an individual who successfully began a career in the arts at an advanced age. In this image: Anna Mary Robertson aka Grandma Moses (American, 1860 - 1961), Halloween, signed and dated July 7, 1958. Sold May 20, 2018 for $100,000 against an estimate of $30,000 - $40,000. All images provided by I.M. Chait Gallery/Auctioneers.

The surprise for me was seeing that she passed away in 1961. I vividly recalled the factoid that she had reached 100, but somehow imagined it to be later than that early date. I remember a Life magazine story on the very senior citizen and a thirty second search shows what the current price for a copy of that issue is going for on eBay.

Here is some additional info from a page in the National Museum of Women in the Arts:

Moses disliked spending time knitting and sewing, but she began entertaining herself and her friends by making needlework pictures and quilts portraying colorful scenes of farm life. At 78, when arthritis rendered her unable to embroider, friends suggested she try painting these scenes instead. 

Moses worked with whatever materials were at hand, used house paint and leftover canvas or fireboard for her first paintings. As a self-taught artist, Moses had little concern for perspective or proportion.

* * * *
I like how she sort of "fell into painting" because of her declining ability to do what she'd loved. Maybe that's the takeaway from her story. It's not uncommon to hear people say, "When God closes one door He opens another." Grandma Moses appears to be the poster child for this aphorism.

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Get into it.