21 Grandma Moses
摩西祖母
At the age of eighty, a farmer"s wife in Cambridge, Virginia, suffered from painful arthritis . The mother of ten children and many grandchildren—and great-grandchildren—loved to do needle work, but her fingers could no longer manipulate the needle to embroider .
在维吉利亚的坎布里奇，有位农妇在她80岁时深受关节炎的痛苦折磨。她有十个子女，还有一群孙辈、曾孙辈的孩子。她爱针线活， 只是手指已不能熟练地拿针绣花了。
The elderly woman looked for something else that would keep her occupied and found she could hold a small paintbrush much easier than a needle. So she tried her hand painting. She thought her farm and country scenes were good enough to show at the Cambridge Fair, but only won prizes for her jams and canned fruit. There were no blue ribbons for her art.
这位老妇开始寻找其他一些可以让她的生活充实起来的事情，她发现比起拿针，拿一支小的油画笔要容易得多。于是她开始尝试画画。她觉得她画的农场和乡村风景非常美丽，足以在坎布里奇集市上展示，但却只给她换来了果酱和水果罐头。她的作品从未获得过最高荣誉。
Then one day an art collector from New York City was traveling through the village and noticed several of her paintings for sale in a local drug store. When he showed them to his friends in the art circles of Manhattan, they were more than curious.
有一天，一位来自纽约的艺术品收藏家旅行经过这个村庄。在一个当地的药店，他注意到了那位农妇放在那里出售的一些油画。当他把这些作品拿给他在曼哈顿艺术圈的朋友们看时，他们无比惊讶。
Soon, "Grandma Moses" gained an international reputation. Her widely-collected works of art were featured on calendars, greeting cards and in exhibitions in leading galleries including the Modern Museum of Art in New York.
不久，“摩西祖母”获得了国际性的声誉。她那被广泛收藏的艺术作品被印制在日历上、贺卡上，并在包括纽约现代艺术馆在内的顶级画廊的展览会上展出。
Even more amazing, twenty-five percent of her 1,500 popular paintings were done after she was 100!
而更令人惊讶的是，在她1500幅受欢迎的油画中，25%都是她在百岁之后完成的！
"And life is what we make it,always has been,always will be.—""Grandma Moses"""" once said."
“生活是由我们自己创造的，过去总是这样，范文，将来也会如此。”——“摩西祖母”曾这样说过。
(By Neil Eskelin)
