She always loved to paint. As a child she didn't like finger painting but she loved to use a brush to create a world for herself in the kindergarten classroom. She didn't stop with the paper in front of her. Walls, teachers, other students were all her unwilling canvases. They took her paints away from her and she didn't get them back until she was thirty five.
She was living in a single wide with a husband and her son Grady. One day when Grady was sick she bought him a little oil painting set but he never touched it, so she did.
It didn't take long for the trailer to become her studio. Easels, paintings everywhere. She'd complete one painting then stretch a new canvas over the top and paint another and another and another. Five canvases on one stretcher. It worked fine.
Landscapes were her favorite subject, but there had to be buildings. They didn't have to be picturesque. When she was starting out she did what she called her trailer trash series. Paintings of her single wide. Every angle, every season. There were seven of them. She put them in an art show at the blackberry festival. Nobody liked them. She didn't sell a painting.
When her husband got a job on the east coast she put her paintings in a barn that belonged to a neighbor.
``If I don't come back for them and you need the space go ahead and burn them,'' she said.
She did not return and years later the farmer and his son stood looking at the paintings.
``She said burn them,'' the farmer said, ``I was wondering if we couldn't sell them.''
``There's a hell of a lot of them,'' his son said, ``there's more than one on each frame.''
They had nothing better to do so they began removing the canvases. Some were destroyed. Paint flaked off everywhere. When they found the trailer trash series, the farmer's son stepped back in admiration.
``We could sell these on the net,'' he said.
He took digital photos of each painting. They sold in a day.
The farmer had all the salvageable paintings re-stretched. They sold them off one at a time.
The painter's name became well known in certain circles. The paintings escalated in value as they changed hands. The wooden shelter where kids waited for the school bus went for seventeen thousand dollars on its fourth sale. People liked the forgotten lunch box on the seat.
In Atlanta the woman knew nothing of her success. She had divorced and married and had another name. She was still painting tirelessly though no one bought her work.