How to go
What: P. Buckley Moss meets collectors and unveils a new print, "The Inn at the End of the Road" (proceeds benefit the Children's Rescue Center)
When: 3 to 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19
Where: The Frame Haven Art Gallery, 1300 Goodwin Ave.
More info: Call (937) 323-9088
SPRINGFIELD — You won’t find her in the Museum of Modern Art.
She has her own museum, thank you very much, and it gets 45,000 visitors every year.
You won’t find her work in any gallery in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami or Seattle.
There are, however, 17 galleries in Ohio and 31 in Iowa that proudly sell it.
She has a mammography unit named after her; she’s received honorary doctorates; she’s been proclaimed both an honorary Kentucky colonel and an honorary Iowan.
She is “The People’s Artist” — and if Thomas Kinkade thinks he’s gonna come snatch that title any day soon, bring it.
He’ll have to get through a posse of bow-legged Mennonite kids first.
P. Buckley Moss is a phenomenon — a woman whose life has been the subject of a theatrical play in West Virginia; an artist who has a fan network of 13,000 collectors in 34 chapters.
She’ll return to the Frame Haven — her one local gallery in a nationwide network of about 300 — next week for a two-day meet-and-greet with area fans.
The occasion marks the release of a new Moss print, “The Inn at the End of the Road,” depicting Springfield’s own Pennsylvania House in all its restored glory.
So how does she do it?
How is she able to bypass the supposed cultural hubs of this fine country and sell prints of her work like they’re Beanie Babies circa ’99?
“Hard work and courage,” Moss explained recently. “You have to have the courage to like who you are.”
On one hand, it’s easy to dismiss the work of 76-year-old Mrs. Pat Moss as the artistic equivalent of a Precious Moments figurine — cute to some, tacky to others, confrontational to none.
But you have to give P. Buck her props — she has a style.
And isn’t that what art is all about?
“I am a rugged individualist,” she said. “I don’t want anybody to say my work is like anybody’s.”
She talks of Picasso and Chagall.
“They didn’t want to be a Rubens,” she said. “They wanted to be themselves.”
A Moss watercolor is really no less identifiable than a Pollock action painting — they both own a certain style.
It’s just that we’ve been conditioned to believe that one (splatters of paint) is fine art and the other (Amish people pushing themselves around in wheelbarrows) is not.
“I listen to music and I melt,” Moss said. “But if I wrote music, I wouldn’t be writing that music.”
A native New Yorker, Moss acquired her trademark style not long after moving to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in 1964.
There, she became influenced by the region’s Amish and Mennonite families.
Her earlier work had dealt with religious imagery — you can see it all at the 20-year-old P. Buckley Moss Museum in Waynesboro, Va. — but in the Shenandoah Valley, she found herself around people living their religion.
Before long, she was populating her rustic landscapes with those same people.
“This sounds corny,” she said, “but everything is given to us by God, and this is paying respect in return.”
But, as Moss recalled, her cartoony depictions haven’t gone unquestioned.
She remembers the time a Mennonite man asked a reasonable question of her — “How come you put our people together with bow legs?”
“People think it’s realistic,” she said. “It’s a realistic form of stylized impressionism. It’s a design. They’re not just little people with little stick legs.
“You don’t know they’re stylized because you’re comfortable with them. They’re welcoming, comfortable designs.”
To many people, particularly here in middle America, Moss is a superstar.
“Springfield has been receptive to her work and style,” said Audrey McKanna, owner of the Frame Haven. “There will be a heart tug. Somebody will say, ‘That looks like my grandchildren.’ She paints little people and children that customers can relate to.
“All of her art is very positive.”
Her values and our values apparently just go together like Amish and buggies.
Her work, McKanna noted, depicts two kinds of togetherness — community building and family bonding.
“Everybody’s in the buggy together,” she said. “It’s very relational and emotional.”
But McKanna concedes that not everyone is a fan. People tend to love it or hate it.
“Everybody,” she added, “has an appreciation for her marketing genius.
“Her marketing plan was her own.”
Her grand plan — to take commissions from galleries, painting scenes specific to that area, then coming to sign prints in person — has endeared her, but also caused some confusion along the way.
“They assume Ohio and Iowa,” Moss said. “They assume I’m a resident.”
So, contrary to popular belief, she’s not from Springfield.
She has, however, painted many of the area’s landmarks — usually working from photos — at the request of Frame Haven.
This will mark Moss’ third visit to the Goodwin Avenue gallery in the seven years Don and Audrey McKanna have owned it.
“I really get to know the history of the country,” Moss said.
Frame Haven gets exclusive rights to the new print from the time of commission until a couple of weeks after her visit — then it goes national, where people will snatch it up not even knowing what the Pennsylvania House is.
“Every day is wonderful,” Moss said. “Every day you wake up and you hope you have the energy for everything you want to do.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.
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