I’ve seen plenty of art museum exhibitions over the years that have given me artistic inspiration, but one in particular has been lodged in my brain and has provided motivation for ten years now. A Jim Shaw exhibition at the New Museum in 2015 included, among other things, his collection of Thrift Store Paintings. Shaw has found these paintings at thrift stores, garage sales and other obscure locations over the course of decades, and are generally by anonymous and amateur artists. Shaw’s selections, however, are focused on oddities, really bad paintings, and sometimes science-fiction-like surrealism. I walked away from this show wanting my own collection of Thrift Store paintings, mesmerized by the completely bizarre things that he had found.
And indeed, over the years I have bought a few paintings of this nature, and am slowly building my own collection. But while I think of my collection as “Thrift Store paintings,” I guess if one were to get technical, most of them have been found at antique stores. Sure, they fit the bill of being by unknown artists and have amateur and weird subject matter, but does coming from an antiques store give them higher status than a thrift store? I don’t know. Does anyone care? Probably not. On a side note, I saw a funny sign outside an antiques store recently, which read: “We buy Junk and Sell Antiques.” Maybe that puts the whole status question to rest right there.
I was on a day trip up to New Paltz this past weekend, and as I was driving down a street, I noticed a Salvation Army store. It suddenly dawned on me, “this qualifies as a thrift store,” and thought that I should go in and see what they had, art-wise. I did a U-turn and went back to go in. Here’s a couple examples of paintings that I saw, the “Chicago” painting at left had a sticker price of $3.99, and the woman seen from behind was $15.99. While both were sufficiently cheesy, neither one inspired me to make a purchase.
But then, in another part of the store, I saw this one below. At first, I noticed the well-painted flower in the top right, and was especially appreciative of the way the sunflower was painted in the bottom left corner – and I was intrigued. But it just seemed like a sloppy mess of color in the middle, and I paused. But after walking around and coming back to it, I saw the middle a bit differently – I noticed a figure seated with arms and legs facing forward, as if this person is seated in a glorious explosion of color in a field of flowers. And at $3.99, I figured this was an investment I could make, to add this to my collection. The back of the canvas is clean, with no markings or signatures, but I did notice the name “Amy S” written on the side in ballpoint ink. Who knows, maybe this was done at one of those “sip and paint” events, or was a student work identified by the teacher’s notation … I have no way of knowing. But this floral painting by Amy S is now part of my collection.
