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I love yard sales. One of my favorite things to do is to walk around collections of old stuff to see what I can find. I have found that something I tend to do is stop and look at paintings. Of all the things in the sale, these are probably my favorite. I have a habit of finding gems in the rough, often looking at a piece of art and thinking, “something about that is important.” I then stare at them for a while. If it is a real painting and not a print, I will often get it, especially if it is cheap. A good painting that speaks to a person is a thing of chance. I am no art connoisseur, nor do I have much experience in identifying great works, but many times I have struck gold on the ones I choose.

My first year in Sanders County, I went to a sale where I saw a painting of the mountains. Something about it screamed out to me. It looked like I could step into those mountains and pull a fish from the river. It seemed to look like how the outdoors used to look, before roads, buildings and people messed them up. I stood there for a moment, looking at the painting. I have found that I am very good at noticing if things are very old. I tell my friends, jokingly, that it is the very old part of my soul saying “Hey, you remember this?” I bought that painting for three dollars and came to learn that it was an original from nearly 100 years ago which could be worth well over $1,500. Not a bad purchase.

Once I was traveling to sales with my girlfriend, and while walking through I stopped at one of a sailing ship. It seemed to buck violently against the ocean waves, and several seagulls flew beside it. In a weird way I felt as though I could smell the salty air and hear those birds. My girlfriend and I left and went to several more sales, but I had to return for that painting. We did, and I borrowed $7 in cash from her to buy it. Upon some further reading, the thing could be worth over $400. Not a bad purchase.

Another time I was driving by a garage sale where there were several paintings leaning up against the wall. I rifled through them and found one of a Hispanic woman carrying something through a pueblo courtyard. It was a watercolor, and so there was great contrast between the rustic nature of the subject, and the format in which it was presented. Depicted was a bluish snow on the shrubs in the painting and one could feel a chill looking at it as if the woman was carrying wood into the house to stoke the fire. There was a homey feel to the scene, and so I paid $20 for it. Later I found out that it was a print and may be worth, at most, $50. It was still not a bad purchase.

One could look at those purchases, and figure that the more one pays for art, the less it is worth. Again, I am not an art fanatic and I know next to nothing about art, but I have found that when a person takes the time to follow their intuition, in life in general, it can lead them to interesting finds. Life, like artwork, is viewed uniquely by each artist and customer. I think, in life, if more people picked up paintings and looked at them with appreciation (regardless of subject matter), instead of walking by and living in their own bubble, we could live in a better world. One where people look at other paintings, besides their own, to find love in the subject rather than judgment.

Because I really never plan on selling any of those paintings in my lifetime, the value of each is unique to what it brings to my life. So, in the end the most expensive painting is really not worth much more than the least, because they all take up space on my wall, and give me something to think about.

Reach John Dowd at [email protected].