Maureen Hurley Art: High School art 1968-70

Since I cannot go farther back in time than 1970 for this blog, all these pre-1970 images are posted here together. Most are either badly rotted, or have extensive water damage. They were safely stored in my old room, at my grandmother’s house, where I grew up.

My aunt, who excelled at gaslighting, moved in, and made my life so miserable I had to leave in order to preserve my own sanity. After I left Forest Knolls, all my artwork—my paintings, drawings, photographs, and childhood memorabilia—was moved into the basement where it later flooded. In 2015, when we began cleaning out my grandmother’s home, I found a few remnants and pieces of my work and took photographs of what survived the ravages of time. A sad salvage job.

The early work in this blog is what survived decades of dampness and rain in the basement. My childhood treasure chest was placed under a window open to the elements. The paintings, in crates, were all rotted at the bottoms. My aunt Jane was dead by the time I made this blog, but I sure was cursing her. I think I am still cursing her. What I mourn for most are the loss of my drawing portfolio, all my large life drawings from the early 1970s. I was very good at it. Even still, it was not a talent I could turn off and on at will. I had to enter the zone sideways, slip in unnoticed by my own sensors, then begin to draw.

We did another big cleanup at my grandmother’s house in 2020-21, where I found many ceramic artifacts buried in the garden, which I will post later. So, fittingly, this entire blog is ephemera, it is literally what I salvaged from the past. I began this blog at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. I think we were all trying to redefine our lives. Gauguin’s quote comes to mind, “who are we, where did we come from, and where are we going.” Apocalyptic end of times. trying to get back to the garden.