Reverend Jone Johnson Lewis quotes Grandma Moses as saying this: 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. This almost sounds like a theological perspective – one which the young Anna Mary Robertson (“who was born before Abe Lincoln had taken office,” and whose family roots have been traced all the way back to the Mayflower) may have learned from her father, Russell King Robertson. According to Grandma Moses’ 1961 New York Times obituary, Russell Robertson “was a Methodist, but never went to church, and he allowed his children to believe
what they wanted. Instead of going to church, they went for long walks in the woods.”
Grandma Moses’ habit of putting people into ecological perspective speaks to a humility that she also practiced in her everyday life. Rather than putting on airs about becoming a world-famous artist – and rather than deify either herself or her craft - she was able to apply this “paint from the top down” perspective to her own life as well.
Wikipedia reports that she turned to painting – not with dreams of artistic glorification, but for very practical
reasons. For one thing, it was easier to come up with Christmas and thank-you gifts this way. For another,
paintings weren’t subject to the ravenous appetites of moths in the way that her embroidery was. Also, when she began this new endeavor at age 76, it was easier to wield a brush than a needle.
Before then, Anna Mary Robertson Moses had also been a “hired girl” (at age 12), a wife (she afterwards
married the “hired man”), a mother (with “ten children, five of whom died in infancy”), a farm housewife, a
food entrepreneur, and a farm operator (after her husband, Thomas Salmon Moses, died in 1927).
Therefore, she spoke from hard-earned experience when she said this: I look back on my life like a good day’s work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it… And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.
Resources
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0907.html
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/grandma_moses.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses
Copyright September 7, 2011 by Linda Van Slyke All Rights Reserved
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