“Paintin’s not important; it’s keepin’ busy that’s important.”
The simplistic, home-spun style evident in the above quote by Anna Mary Robertson, demonstrates a similar inspirational but simplistic style evident in the paintings by this female artist better known as Grandma Moses. Born in 1860, Robertson would live for more than a century spanning the Civil War and both World Wars, dying at the age of 101 in 1961 (Artist 1). Robertson’s simplistic, inspirational paintings are part of American Folk Art the way Norman Rockwell paintings are associated with Americana. Robertson earned her moniker of Grandma Moses and remains an inspiration to senior citizens around the world to this day, because she did not begin to paint until the age of seventy-seven (Grandma 1).
As down-to-earth as her paintings are primitive, Robertson was a farm woman who believed that hard work was the answer to survival. She once said, “If I didn’t start painting, I would have raised chickens” (Grandma 1). Robertson only tried her hand at painting at the age of seventy-five because her arthritis had become so severe it robbed her of her favorite craft – needlework. Robertson’s personal life was as busy as her artistic one. She was born in upstate New York and remained single until the age of twenty-seven, a relatively old age for first marriages among women of her era. Once she did marry, Robertson moved with her husband to Virginia where she bore ten children of which only five would survive (Grandma 1). Once her husband passed away in the late 1920s, Moses moved back to New York where those who knew her say she was a “feisty and strong-willed” woman (Grandma 1).
Grandma Moses remains an inspiration to millions of Americans, feminists, and senior citizens around the world. Her achievements and down-to-earth talent at an advanced age demonstrate not only the potential for productivity and achievement in older age bu...