I had a show and studio sale several years ago, took everything, almost, from my studio, installed it in the local library. Probably a thousand pieces of art– drawings, paintings, scraps, beginnings. The walls were covered. Three or four tables were covered with stacks of papers– drawings and paintings. A friend came, spent hours looking through just about everything. He’s an artist too.
At the end of the afternoon, he came to me and said, “I can only afford to buy one; this is it. This one speaks to me. This one really has something. What can you tell me about it?”
I said, “This is ironic. That’s the one piece here that wasn’t painted by me.”
He said, eyes wide, “Who, then?”
Then he saw I was amused, and so he was too.
I said, I don’t know who, but it was some 8-year-old child who painted with me at the county fair last summer. Somehow their painting got mixed with mine….”