I get asked all the time, how I got started making art. I tell them about the now exwife fussing about me for being laid off and not having a job and taking the online career quiz that said that I should be an artist. Another question I'm often asked is where do I get my inspiration? I usually answer that with the statment ideas just pop into my head over morning coffee. I question that I'm asked on occassion is where do I get my drive? Why do I continue to make art? I hope to answer that one here.
The above painting is one of the pieces in my collection. It is one of my favorites actually, but by far the most expensive. I bought it for 50cents at a yard sale. It is a painting done on cardboard titled "American Air Plane Carrier" signed Auberlene Myhand and dated 1933. I really like the fact that it displays a part of history, from the time it was actually occuring and the colors have held up very well. I've been able to find out very little about Auberlene Myhand, in fact, all I was able to find was a photograph of her tombstone. I used to walk the cemetery with my grandmother. She was in her 90's when she passed away. Many of the graves in the old part of the cemetery were unmarked other than a rock with no inscription, or weathered to the extent they were no longer readable. She knew who was in every one of them though. I've often thought about that after her passing, nobody may know who these people were anymore.
As I go through graveyards now, I begin to wonder that if in time all that will be known about the people lying in them will be the year they were born and died. No mention anywhere of what occurred in between, the life they lived. I want more than that. I want to leave something behind that said I was here. I'd guess you'd call it a legacy. Just something to say SamG was here.
Auberlene Myhand may not have left much of a legacy, one painting and a picture of her tombstone is all I've been able to find. However, what little bit of her I have discovered has inspired me enough that I wanted to tell you about her. Isn't that what creates a legacy to begin with???
