Grandma Moses
Grandma Moses
Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known by her nickname Grandma Moses, was a renowned American folk artist. Having begun painting in earnest at the age of 78, she is often cited as an example of an individual successfully beginning a career in the arts at an advanced age. Her works have been shown and sold in the United States and abroad and have been marketed on greeting cards and other merchandise. Moses' paintings are among the collections of many museums. The...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth7 September 1860
CountryUnited States of America
Memory is a painter. Paintin's not important. The important thing is keepin' busy.
Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.
Painting's not important. The important thing is keeping busy.
I don't advise any one to take it up as a business proposition, unless they really have talent, and are crippled so as to deprive them of physical labor.
What a strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.
. . . daydreams, as it were . . . I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get ready to paint I just close my eyes and imagine a scene.
I have written my life in small sketches, a little today, a little yesterday . . . I look back on my life a good day's work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it. I made the best out of what life offered.
Someone has asked me to paint Biblical pictures, and I say no, I'll not paint something that we know nothing about, might just as well paint something that will happen two thousand years hence.
If I hadn't started painting, I would have raised chickens.
I have written my life in small sketches, a little today, a little yesterday, as I have thought of it, as I remember all the things from childhood on through the years, good ones and unpleasant ones, that is how they come out and that is how we have to take them.
I would never sit back in a rocking chair, waiting for someone to help me.
I paint from the top down. From the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the houses, then the cattle, and then the people.
I have written my life in small sketches, a little today, a little yesterday... I look back on my life as a good day's work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it. I made the best out of what life offered.
Life is what you make it.