Lady Marchmain

Herself

from Wikipedia

Moses began painting in her seventies after abandoning a career in embroidery because of arthritis. Louis J. Caldor, a collector, discovered her paintings in a Hoosick Falls, New York drugstore window in 1938. In 1939, an art dealer, Otto Kallir, exhibited some of her work in his Galerie Saint-Etienne in New York. This brought her to the attention of collectors all over the world, and her paintings became highly sought after. She went on to exhibit her work throughout Europe and in Japan, where her work was particularly well received. She continued her prolific output of paintings, the demand for which never diminished during her lifetime. Grandma Moses painted mostly scenes of rural life. Some of her many paintings were used on the covers of Hallmark cards.

Her early style is less individual and more realistic,(also known as primitive art),despite her lack of knowledge of (or perhaps rejection of) basic perspective.^[1][2] She did not develop her immediately recognizable signature folk style until later. Many of her early paintings in the realist style were given to family members as thank-you gifts after her visits. She was a prolific painter, generating over 3600 canvasses in 3 decades. Before her fame, she would charge $2 for a small painting and $3 for a large. Her winter paintings are reminiscent of some of the known winter paintings of Pieter Bruegel, the Elder, such as The Hunters in the Snow and Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap.

In 1946 her painting The Old Checkered Inn in Summer was featured in the background of a national advertising campaign for the young women's lip gloss Primitive Red by Du Barry cosmetics.

President Harry S. Truman presented her with the Women's National Press Club trophy Award for outstanding accomplishment in art in 1949, and in 1951 she appeared on See It Now, a television program hosted by Edward R. Murrow. In 1952 she published her autobiography and titled it Grandma Moses: My Life's History.

On her 100th birthday in 1960, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller proclaimed the day "Grandma Moses Day" in her honor.

On a lighter note

Sorry  to have been so heavy in last post. But when I think "bioethics" and "hospitals"  my mind always goes to personal experience. I  sincerely hope none of my readers have had to endure the caprices of the wicked.

Below  is a Grandma Moses painting.  She began painting at a very advanced age.  I believe she lived in Vermont.

Remember how good the world can be.  I have looked out the window during the darkest depressions and noticed how beautiful the sky was.  It didn't particularly cheer me up, but it reminded me of an aspect of reality I was not  seeing.

Children also have that effect.  Which is one of the bizillion reasons to have them.

Happy New Year everyone! It will be a great year for all of us. I am sure. In my own case, the groundwork has been laid... Thanks to all my friends for the support last year.

On to more bioethics. This year I get to do a practicum in a hospital. I have always wanted the chance to observe and critique doctors and nurses..

Not for the reasons you might think. I have found so many doctors and nurses to be really lousy at their jobs--both sloppy and unprofessional, and unethical.  I remember the nurses and doctor who killed my mother in a hospice by means of dehydration. Three of us--my sisters and I--called and called and begged them to  stop what they were doing.  To reconnect her IV... ironically even though she wouldn't eat (that was why those warm-hearted humanitarians disconnected her IV--punishment for not eating, maybe?) they were still giving her insulin. And  morphine.  But  no water. The doctor, whose name is Justos Cisneros (beware him if you live in San Antonio) went to an extremely obscure and unaccredited medical  school in a part of Mexico I've never heard of, would not even come to the phone.

Barbarians.  Never, ever go to a hospice that isn't  Catholic, no matter what religion  you are.  They will knock you off for seemingly trivial reasons, and not in a nice way.

Anyway, Mom is in heaven, and I can't do anything to the hospice people (if I could remember the name of the damned place I would publish it)or the doctor but warn others. The very saddest thing is that, living here in a relatively poor town in Ohio I have seen and  experienced the kind of substandard medical  care available to the poor.  It is infuriating.