Sweet Old Terrible Artist Grandma Margaret

I was named after my late Grandmother Margaret who many people know and love. By many, she was known for her murals across New York, but by me she was known as someone who just happened to be standing next to a painting wearing clothes covered in paint. My grandmother was a wonderful woman. She grew up in a poor family, worked on their farm and was surrounded by her extended family. Family can be a handful especially when eight of you share a small room. With much love in her heart for all her family, she was ready to get out of there as soon as she could read. She had a loud personality and big dreams of becoming an engineer. She was told by her family her whole life that she would live on the farm forever but she had other plans. As soon as she turned 18, she left home in search of a better life. Margaret went from a small town in Kentucky all the way to New York. She met a man, my grandfather and they got married shortly after. She had 4 kids and then 7 grandkids. My grandmother had wanted to be an engineer since she was a young girl. After getting married and having kids, she decided to go back to school to earn her degree. Margaret was a hard worker, she was at top of her class and would not let anyone bring her down. She was naturally smart but studied tons regardless. However, there was one class that Margaret could not seem to get the hang of. Art. She was terrible. And not just your typical bad at art, but it was questionable if she even knew how to hold a paintbrush. She practiced and practiced but could never get the hang of it. Even my grandpa didn't want to look at her work, at least not with his eyes open. So she decided to get some extra help. She started to take some art classes outside of school but even those she could not keep up with. She was busy with school and kids, but she still tried to practice her painting because she needed to pass Art class in order to get her degree. Meanwhile in New York, there was an anonymous painter that was doing murals all over the city. They showed sunny skies, starry nights, scenes from movies, fields of flowers, underwater life and much more. Nobody could figure out who the painter was. Weeks passed as more murals went up, still nobody could figure out who it was. One night, my grandmother was doing one of her art assignments but could not make it work. For the past hour she had been trying to paint a deer and her baby. Her colors were all wrong and so were the shapes. In anger, she punched a hole right through her canvas and squirted her paints down the sink. Since she was no quitter, she rummaged around the basement and found another canvas she could use. She scoured for more brown and white paint but only had blue and silver. Determined to pass her art class, she decided to walk down to the store nearby and get some more paint. With paint splatters all over her clothes, she took off. She used a crisp ten dollar bill to buy a tube of brown paint and a tube of white. She left the store, eager to get home and try again. Carrying her new supplies home, she stopped to admire a freshly painted mural on her walk back. As she was trying to examine how they had painted their animals so easily in the mural, someone behind her said “Smile! We finally found you!”. Unaware of what was happening she told them her name but was confused. After returning home, she finished her painting, not a great one but she needed the points. The next morning she woke up to her name in every newspaper and her picture floating around every news station with the caption “Anonymous artist is finally found!”. My grandmother tried to deny it and even tried to show her terrible artwork to prove it, but people claimed she was just painting bad on purpose to set people off. Even her art teachers were surprised but believed it to be true. From then on, Margaret Lusher became known as the anonymous artist. Even most of our family still believes that she was the anonymous New York mural painter. However, me being her favorite grandchild, I was passed down her journals. I read all her stories, from her 7th birthday party to her getting famous off murals she didn’t paint. My grandmother tried for years to find the real artist but failed. The artist continued to paint murals and everytime a new one went up, a new reporter showed up at my grandmother's house. After years of denying, she knew this wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. Instead, she let the credit fall on her. She received donations from countless organizations and artists but didn’t feel right accepting the money. So, being the wonderful woman she is, donated it to tons of different places, hosted charity events, she raised even more money for those that could not support themselves. She also would leave money randomly hidden in art stores, with hopes that one time the anonymous mural artist would find it and put it towards a good cause. Even though she never was good at art, she would still paint for fun even though most of the time she ended up punching through the canvases. She explained in her journals how she always felt guilty for taking someone else’s fame even though she tried so hard to push it away. My grandmother's story might seem a little far-fetched but you’re going to have to trust me on this because unfortunately some of her artwork was also passed down and let me tell you she didn’t have one artistic bone in her body.