Art & Creativity Quote by Grandma Moses

A sly little grenade of humility, lobbed straight into the romantic myth of the Artist. Grandma Moses is talking about craft, yes, but she’s also puncturing the idea that painting is automatically the highest or most necessary thing a person can do. “If you know somethin’ well, you can always paint it” is permission-giving: mastery isn’t mystical; it’s proximity. Know a thing deeply enough - a field, a kitchen, a neighbor’s face - and you’ve already done most of the work art pretends to require. The line’s folksy cadence (“somethin’,” “buyin’”) isn’t decoration; it’s her authority. She’s refusing the museum’s vocabulary and keeping the power in ordinary speech.

Then comes the twist: “but people would be better off buyin’ chickens.” It’s funny, but not just funny. It’s a rural economics lesson, a reminder that beauty doesn’t feed you. Chickens mean eggs, continuity, self-reliance - tangible value versus aesthetic value. Moses, who famously began painting late in life after years of domestic labor, is also smuggling in a gendered critique: women’s work gets framed as “mere” survival while art gets canonized. She’s saying she knows which one the world actually runs on.

The context matters: her paintings were celebrated as “naive” Americana, often sentimentalized by urban collectors. This quote pushes back against being turned into a quaint symbol. She’s insisting her art comes from the same place as the chickens: lived knowledge, repetitive labor, and a clear-eyed sense of what matters when the bills are due.