DiscussMormonism.com

I love looking at Morley's avatars, and then searching the artist and reading about them and their life and art. I thought it would be cool to share some of the art we enjoy.

Winter.... Grama Moses. I love how most of her paintings are busy, with lots of family, animals, and with a community feel. She really captured the winter sky in this one. One of her great quotes.... "If I hadn't started painting, I would have raised chickens".

Holy cow, her perspective and proportions are WAY off.

Dr. Shades wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 12, 2025 9:42 am

Holy cow, her perspective and proportions are WAY off.

Grama Moses did not start painting until she was 78 years old, she lived to be 101. She was born right before the American Civil War. Had 10 children, and only 5 lived past infancy. She was a house keeper and farm hand. She lost her husband in his 60's, and worked to support herself, never remarrying.

She worked hard to survive, and was a survivor. As arthritis set in, she struggled with needle work and it was suggested by her sister that she concentrated on painting. She started out selling her paintings for a few dollars a piece, and later getting 10k or so as she gained popularity. Today they have fetched over a million dollars.

She was a small quick witted woman, with a lot or personality. I can see all this in most of her paintings. They often depict a "working day" on the farm, they depict a New England way of farm life, and again community and family.

Her perspective, in my opinion, is awesome, yet the perspectives of the scenes, mechanically, are indeed way off.... in a perfect way. She is painting what she is feeling and seeing.

I enjoyed the painting, and I enjoy Morley adding artwork to his avatar. I could really identify with The Scream when he used it. Thank you, Morley.

Is that style called primitivism?

Markk wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 12, 2025 2:43 am

I love looking at Morley's avatars, and then searching the artist and reading about them and their life and art. I thought it would be cool to share some of the art we enjoy.

Winter.... Grama Moses. I love how most of her paintings are busy, with lots of family, animals, and with a community feel. She really captured the winter sky in this one. One of her great quotes.... "If I hadn't started painting, I would have raised chickens".

Good choice of a Grandma Moses (Anna Robertson) painting, Markk. I think her winter scenes are some of her most compelling work. For good reason, they're frequently compared to those painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a 16th Century Flemish painter.


Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow, Winter (1565).

Shades is something of an artist, and he's right when he notes that Robertson's perspective and proportions are certainly askew--however, I don't think she was especially concerned about that. Robertson was a folk artist without any academic training, and her strength is that she doesn't pretend to be anything else. Besides that, strict standards of perspective and proportion are a relatively recent invention, only surfacing in the last 600 years or so. For good reason, more than a few modern painters deliberately set them aside.

Thank you, Markk, for introducing this artist.

With his background in art history, I'd be interested in what Huck has to say.

Markk wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 12, 2025 12:27 pm

Her perspective, in my opinion, is awesome, yet the perspectives of the scenes, mechanically, are indeed way off.... in a perfect way. She is painting what she is feeling and seeing.

I think this is a great point, Markk. This is why paintings can say things that photography isn't able to. As you suggest, we don't see things mechanically. Our eyes shift, we see things over time, and we often don't gage size and perspective in the same strict way that we often think we do. This is what Paul Cézanne intuitively grasped that others had to discover.

Morley wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 12, 2025 2:23 pm

Markk wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 12, 2025 2:43 am

I love looking at Morley's avatars, and then searching the artist and reading about them and their life and art. I thought it would be cool to share some of the art we enjoy.

Winter.... Grama Moses. I love how most of her paintings are busy, with lots of family, animals, and with a community feel. She really captured the winter sky in this one. One of her great quotes.... "If I hadn't started painting, I would have raised chickens".

Good choice of a Grandma Moses (Anna Robertson) painting, Markk. I think her winter scenes are some of her most compelling work. For good reason, they're frequently compared to those painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a 16th Century Flemish painter.


Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow, Winter (1565).

Shades is something of an artist, and he's right when he notes that Robertson's perspective and proportions are certainly askew--however, I don't think she was especially concerned about that. Robertson was a folk artist without any academic training, and her strength is that she doesn't pretend to be anything else. Besides that, strict standards of perspective and proportion are a relatively recent invention, only surfacing in the last 600 years or so. For good reason, more than a few modern painters deliberately set them aside.

Thank you, Markk, for introducing this artist.

With his background in art history, I'd be interested in what Huck has to say.

I was about to say, the loose way she paints would be considered ahead of her time. In modern art that unrealistic perspective would be considered a feature, not a mistake.

Morley wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 12, 2025 2:23 pm

Good choice of a Grandma Moses (Anna Robertson) painting, Markk. I think her winter scenes are some of her most compelling work. For good reason, they're frequently compared to those painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a 16th Century Flemish painter.


Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hunters in the Snow, Winter (1565).

Thanks for posting Bruegel. His depth in that pic is amazing with subtle and natural shadows in the back ground trees, which, made me realize that grama Moses did not add shadows, and least in most of her paintings.

But I looked through most of Moses' catalog quickly looking for shadow and stumbled on this one....here, to me, she seems to have tighter focus and digs deep inside.




I need to do some home work on Bruegal and his works. I did a quick look through and some dark stuff. Thanks again

Morley wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 12, 2025 2:43 pm

Markk wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 12, 2025 12:27 pm

Her perspective, in my opinion, is awesome, yet the perspectives of the scenes, mechanically, are indeed way off.... in a perfect way. She is painting what she is feeling and seeing.

I think this is a great point, Markk. This is why paintings can say things that photography isn't able to. As you suggest, we don't see things mechanically. Our eyes shift, we see things over time, and we often don't gage size and perspective in the same strict way that we often think we do. This is what Paul Cézanne intuitively grasped that others had to discover.

Thanks, more home work

This banana taped to a wall recently sold for over 6 million dollars:



https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/nx-s1-51 ... rt-auction