Friday, September 07, 2007

Grandma Moses' Birthday

Here is another female artist to add to my meagre collection. Today would have been the birthday of one of the USA's national treasures - the artist known as Grandma Moses.
She's seen here with Norman Rockwell - perhaps it was taken on her 100th birthday.




Extract below from here.
Astrological comments related to natal chart added,in red, by me.

"Anna Robertson, later to become "Grandma" Moses was born on September 7, 1860 in upstate New York. She didn't marry until she was twenty seven, but still bore ten children. Only five of those lived to adulthood. When her husband was alive they lived in Virginia, but after his death in 1927 she moved back to New York. People who knew her say she was feisty and strong willed.(Mars in Capricorn on the ascendant) A necessary trait, no doubt, in the Depression years.


She started painting at age 75, after arthritis prevented her from doing needlework. Her work was discovered by a collector during the Depression.

Grandma Moses's work was known as American Primitive in the art world ( she said that primitive is what they call amateur art that sells). She painted her scenes on pieces of old wood which she painted white. Her paintings are simple in texture, but complex in content( Virgoan eye for detail). She depicted happy scenes from real life, much as she might have stitched them on canvas before her arthritis took hold. She said she painted from the sky down. Sky first, then the mountains, then the land, then the people. Her people were shown doing anything she might have seen someone do in her long, active life, and were rich in color.

Between the start of her painting career at age seventy-five and her death at age one hundred and one in 1961, Grandma Moses painted approximately sixteen hundred paintings.
Some two hundred and fifty of those were painted after her hundredth birthday!(Moon/Uranus in Gemini - youthful and energetic outlook) Some say her family never took her paintings seriously, but the art world certainly did."


Two quotes from Grandma Moses
"Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be". (Amen!)
"Painting's not important. The important thing is keeping busy.'(Saturn conjunct Mercury, Mars in Capricorn on ascendant)

You have only to look at the paintings of Grandma Moses (explore them via Google Image)to know that Earth will be the predominant element in her natal chart. 5 planets and ascendant in Earth, 2 each in Air and Fire, one in Water.

5 comments:

Dunyazade said...

Interesting and beautiful paintings.
I wanna be like her when I'm old: keep being busy, not whinning about "life is hard" and being productive.

*****

Twilight said...

Hello again dunyazade.

Yes, me too! If I make it to 100 years, I hope I'll manage still to be blogging. :-)

Michelle said...

I love her art.

Oh, by the way.. I was talking to a friend this morning about science now thinking light affects DNA. If they do go that route than light from stars effecting DNA could be a possible future step? I've been keen on the idea of light/electromagnetics being the connection betweenDNA and astrology for years, but without a scientific mindset I'm just someone with a hunch rather than facts and figures.

Twilight said...

Yes, Michelle. I'm convinced that there will be a clear link to DNA -there absolutely has to be, but from what source I have no opinion.

Light and magnetic waves are both good bets. But there's bound to be much more yet to discover - a new discovery in physics or from space exploration could open wide the door to how (some of) astrology works.

Shanna said...

Gravity from planets and stars is also a possibility. Gravity creates the waves in the ocean. Without it, astronauts loose bone mass.