08/12/2025
A message from Jerry Letkeman, Executive Director
August is a month that invites us to embrace life’s transitions, celebrate abundance, and cherish the fleeting beauty of the season. August is a reminder to live fully and intentionally.
"She picked up her first paintbrush at 76… and ended up with her art on the walls of the MoMA.
My name is Anna Mary Robertson Moses — but you probably know me as Grandma Moses.
I was born in 1860, on a humble farm in New York State. As a little girl, I used to dream of painting beautiful things, but life had other plans. By the age of twelve, I was scrubbing floors in other people’s houses. By twenty-seven, I was a wife and mother.
I had ten children, though heartbreak spared me only five to raise. I spent decades cooking, washing, tending crops, and caring for my family. My world was dirt roads, hard winters, and quiet endurance.
Then, at seventy-six, I found myself widowed and my children grown and scattered. Alone at my kitchen table, my hands stiff from arthritis, I picked up a brush for the first time since childhood.
With a few coins leftover from my grocery money, I bought my first paints. I painted what I knew — snowy fields, rustic barns, wagons, Sunday picnics, the simple warmth of country life. I didn’t paint for recognition. I painted to remember, and to remind others of a world that was slipping away.
One day, a collector noticed my little paintings displayed in the corner of a local shop. He bought every one. Before long, my work was hanging in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
At eighty, I appeared in Life magazine. Between seventy-six and one hundred and one, I created over 2,000 paintings.
I always stayed a farm woman in spirit. But I learned this much: sometimes, dreams wait for us. They blossom the moment we find the courage — or the loneliness — to set them free.
It’s never too late. Not if your heart still carries a bit of color."
…from a Sunny Rosanbalm online post.
Remember, you’re never too old to learn or relearn new things. Allow August to coax you into living more intentionally and without regret.
