Summary of Grandma Moses
The story of Grandma Moses attributes success and longevity to perseverance, childlike enthusiasm, and an unwavering appreciation of life's small joys. Moses only started to paint daily from her mid-70s, and from then onwards worked prolifically until her 100th year. Since childhood, as the only sister amongst brothers, Moses passionately resented and resisted the patriarchal stereotype of women and girls being confined to the house, restricted, and dependent. Interestingly therefore, her own paintings omit indoor drudgery altogether and instead focus on the vast wonder of outside nature; they look beyond social expectations and instead gaze romantically towards the horizon. Her paintings give home to a constant hive of activity combined with a great deal of playfulness. Indeed, Moses was a pioneer and a visionary, staunchly independent herself and interested in better equality for all. Utterly self-taught with a directness of vision, her life and work illuminate the far-reaching power of one pair of practical, whilst also determined and devoted, human hands. Indeed, Grandma Moses came to embody a modern-day saint with her birthday recorded as a national holiday.
Accomplishments
- Many of Grandma Moses' paintings illustrate day-to-day farm activities, for example, "sugaring off" (preparing maple syrup), shearing and washing sheep, and making soap and butter. Her pictures present these activities as highly creative acts in themselves. Furthermore, the paintings often have a three-dimensional quality that recalls the artist's talents as a yarn embroiderer. The point being that Moses was making things all her life, there was an artistry and originality to all that she laid her hand to, from certain farming methods (she was famous for both her exquisite butter and delicious jam), to other modes of crafting, to painting.
- There is a specifically American quality to Moses' work, not only in the reminder that the first settlers to arrive on the American frontiers were farmers by necessity, but also in an appreciation of the healthy values embodied within a quickly eroding traditional way of life. Whilst Grant Wood and the other American Regionalists are also known for his depictions of (sometimes) idyllic pastoral America, Grandma Moses differs in that she stays clear of stylization and any ethical viewpoint. She instead opens up a more simple, innocent, and authentic window onto American countryside activities.
- As an Outsider Artist, with "folk" and "naïve" tendencies Moses had no formal training; she was an exceptionally imaginative character and worked typically in isolation. Unusually however, her work does not have the same dark, anxious, and conflicting aspects customary to Art Brut. Instead, like the British Alfred Wallis, she focused on joy, nostalgia, and something endearing and quaint about everyday life. It could be that coming to art so late in years has created a sub-category within outsider art intent on rendering the world positively. Both artists inspired more mainstream artists who struggled to reach the same state of raw and untainted creativity.
- As an early example of art commercialized, Moses' paintings were made into a number of salable products including greetings cards, tiles, and fabrics and marketed to sell lipstick, coffee, and cigarettes. This aspect of her work is quite ironic, for although the subject of her work supports self-sustainability, and she herself held ambiguous views on the "progress" of industrialization, her popularization was fueled by burgeoning capitalism. Grandma Moses became a celebrity artist, and her character even featured in a television show. With her paintings as likely to be seen on a fridge magnet or a tea towel as they are hanging on a gallery wall, it is a great achievement to become embraced by popular culture to such an extent.
Biography of Grandma Moses
The artist best known as "Grandma Moses" was born Anna Mary Robertson; the third of ten children to parents Russell King Robertson, a flax farmer, and Mary Shannahan Robertson. Author Margot Cleary describes how Moses, "...spent her early years learning how to do women's work on the farm. She helped raise the younger children, made soap and candles and boiled down maple sap." Despite her responsibilities, Moses enjoyed her childhood, later describing it as, "...happy days, free from care or worry, helping mother, rocking Sister's cradle, taking sewing lessons from mother sporting with my Brothers, making rafts to float over the mill pond, Roam the wild woods gathering Flowers, and building air castles." (she wrote thus exactly in her later reflections). Moses had three brothers and she loved being outdoors with them, she describes herself in her own memoir, My Life's History, as something of a "tomboy" and said that if there was anything her brothers could do, she could do it better.
