Sue Gill Online

A German proverb says, “The oldest trees often bear the sweetest fruit”. Besides my own Grandmother Anderson, an amazing self-taught artist, Grandma Moses, truly inspires me. Anna Mary Robertson lived until she was 101 years old, but she had only started painting when she was 76 years old. Her paintings hang in nine museums in the United States as well as in Paris and Vienna. She is best known as Grandma Moses.

The reason she took up painting so late in life is because arthritis had made it impossible for her to hold her needle to embroider, her favorite hobby. However, she could hold a brush just fine, and not wanting to be idle, she began painting. She is one of the best-known American artists in Europe.

Grandma Moses had her own unique style, which proved to be very popular. Well known for nostalgic scenes in gay colors, she illustrated farm life and the countryside. She had a knack for bringing a simple scene to life.

An art collector saw some of her paintings in a drug store priced from $3 to $5 each. He purchased all of her available art, and the following year she ended up having an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Her art was reproduced on Hallmark Christmas cards, on tiles and fabrics throughout the world.

A German fan said of her art: There emanates from her paintings a light-hearted optimism; the world she shows us is beautiful and it is good. You feel at home in all these pictures, and you know their meaning. The unrest and the neurotic insecurity of the present day make us inclined to enjoy the simple and affirmative outlook of Grandma Moses.

Grandma Moses painted only from what was in her memory. She wanted to share how she lived when she was young with everyone. In her 25 years of painting, she produced more than one thousand (that’s 1000) pictures, 25 of which after she was 100 years old! Her paintings went from the price of $3-$5 each to $8,000 – $10,000 each. One of her paintings “Sugaring Off” (1943) was her highest selling work at US $1.2 million in November 2006.

Her work has been compared to that of Henri Rousseau. The particular style they share designates those artists who live in a developed and sophisticated society, but they are not trained in artistic perception and lighting that most artists excel at. In Grandma Moses’ words describing the phenomenon “we make amateur art that sells”.

I would be happy to have a tenth of the fame Grandma Moses did with her art. She is truly inspirational and she was not worried about technique or criticism. She just loved painting.

Alas, the story of Grandma Moses would not be complete without the other part of her bio, which was that she had given birth to ten children, half of which died in infancy. She had begun working as a hired girl at age 12, and continued until she was 27 when she met and married Thomas Salmon Moses. She lived in Virginia and made butter and potato chips, selling them to her neighbors. She continued to run the farm after her husband passed together with her son.

One of Grandma Moses’ paintings, Fourth of July, hangs in the White House and was painted in honor of President Eisenhower.

Some of the artist’s quotes follow:

“If I didn’t start painting, I would have raised chickens.”

“I paint from the top down. From the sky, then the mountains, then the hill, then the houses, then the cattle, and then the people.”

“I look back on my life like a good day’s work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it. I was happy and contented; I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.”

English artist, Tracey Emin was born on July 03, 1963 in Croydon, London, United Kingdom. She spent most of her initial years in Margate, Kent, London, and had a tumultuous childhood. Emin’s father was a Turkish Cypriot and owned a Hotel in Margate. The living standard of the artist’s family declined after her father’s business collapsed. Moreover, it was found that he was having an extra marital affair. Tracey Emin was also raped when she was around fourteen years old. Most of the themes of her paintings are a reflection of these troubled times.

Tracey Emin, one of the so-called Young British Artists (YBAs), also known as Britartists, studied fashion at the Medway College of design, during 1980-82. Here she met Billy Childish, who went on to be her temporary boyfriend until 1987. During this phase, Tracey’s paintings were ‘Expressionist’ in style. Her relationship with Billy gave rise to ‘Stuckism’ movement in 1999. She studied printmaking art at the Maidstone Art College (1984), after which she came back to London and did her M.A. in painting in 1987, at the Royal College of Art. The works of Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele significantly influenced her during this time. Later, Tracy Enim also studied Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. Following her abortion, the artist painted the series, “Abortion Watercolor,” in 1990. In 1993, the artist opened a shop, The Shop, in Benthal Green with her contemporary Sarah Lucas. The shop displayed the artworks of the duo. All this while, Tracey Emin was simultaneously working with the gallery owner, Joshua Compston too.

In 1994, the artist did her first solo exhibition called “My Major Retrospective,” at the White Cube Gallery, London. Here she displayed her earlier works, photographs that she had destroyed, and some random items. This lack of order and unpredictability in her works later became one of her trademarks. By around 1995, Tracey Enim started seeing a gallery owner, Carl Freedman. Still unknown to many in the public domain, Tracey Emin shot to fame and gained considerable notoriety, rivaled only by Damien Hirst of the YBA’s, when she appeared drunk on one of the channel 4 TV programs in 1997. In 1999, Emin was nominated for Turner prize for one of her most controversial installation works, “My Bed,” which was also showcased at the Tate Gallery. Other polemical works by Emin include the tent, “Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1963-95)” and the monoprint drawings of both the public and the private life of Princess Diana, such as “They Wanted You to Be Destroyed (1999).” In 1997, Tracey Emin released her autobiographical film called “CV Cunt Vernacular,” where she recounted in detail, her early days at Margate, her life as a student, and her successes & failures. Later, in 2004, she had a movie released called “Top Spot,” which she refused to promote and distribute, as it was given an 18 certificate by the movie censors. In 1999, she converted the beach hut at Whitstable “The Last Thing I Said to You is Don’t Leave Me Here.” The artwork was destroyed in a fire rage in 2004.

Tracey Emin started concentrating more on painting since 2004. “Purple Virgin (2004),” “Asleep Alone With Legs Open (2005),” “the Reincarnation (2005) series,” “Masturbating (2006),” “Rose Virgin (2007),” “Get Ready For The Fuck Of Your Life (2007),” and “Red Girl (2007),” are some of her most noted recent works. In March 2007, the artist was elected as a Royal Academician for the Royal Academy of Arts, London. She represented Britain the same year at the Italian contemporary art exhibition, Venice Biennale. Tracey Emin likes to experiment with several different materials. She conveyed her feelings through different modes, such as neon lights in “You Forgot to Kiss My Soul,” fabrics, needlework, sculpture, drawing, video, installation, photography, and paintings. Presently, Tracey Emin teaches confessional art at the European Graduate School. The artist is passionately involved in charities too.

Everything in our lives, to a greater or lesser extent, is connected to money and art is no exception. Artists need money for canvases, paints, films, PCs and, of course, they need to eat! This means that any artist sooner or later will be brought reluctantly to face with the problem of getting money.

Yes, art history knows some happy exceptions, such as when an artist was descended from a wealthy family or found a rich sponsor or benefactor. However, the number of these exceptions is small, and the majority of artists in the beginning of their career experience money difficulties, and sometimes this lasts all their life.

Why can’t artists reliably earn a living through their artworks? Why must they so often have a traditional day job and create their as yet unacknowledged masterpieces by night? Why is a Van Gogh a good investment while it is really risky to invest money in contemporary artists?

All answers to these questions come down to the same point, which is that people who are buying art prefer to invest in artists who are known to have a solid reputation, this is more important to them than going for what they really like. This is practical from the point of view of financial investment, but makes no sense in an emotional way – if art doesn’t give you a feeling of beauty, if doesn’t guide you to a different world, then it is not the art for you. The desire to buy a particular artwork should ideally resemble love at first sight.

Money can affect the artist’s scope for free expression. In order to make serious money from their work artists often feel that they need to create artworks that will score big successes in a society and will earn them money. These artworks do not necessarily carry great value; this is like the hit of the season that will be forgotten in the near future.

The key thing is for an artist to remember the reason they chose art as their profession – not in order to get rich quickly, or be incredibly famous and known all around the world. Rather, the point was to be able to create in the way that they wanted to, to give form to the ideas in their head, and to share these things with the rest of the world. When artists bear this in mind, they will be able to be satisfied with the quiet appreciation and steady but unremarkable sales that most artists experience in their lives. It is enough to pay the bills, perhaps have a little over, and keep creating.