CNF Exercise 1 Dylan Pangborn

 The Most Popular Portrait

As a child, I found myself spending a lot of time at my grandparents’ house. The two of them had spent their lives as farmers and lived modestly. This modest lifestyle made one thing in their house stand out as unusual. Hanging above their fireplace was a large framed portrait of a thin man with glasses and a pitchfork standing beside his rather plain wife. As far as I was concerned it was a perfect representation of the two old souls who lived here, their stern yet not angry expressions molded by years of hardship and tiring work was something I had a become accustomed to. It had never even occurred to me in my child’s mind to ask about the painting. I was immediately satisfied with my own explanation of the portrait being a rare purchase of something that was not essential and happily moved along. It was not until years later when I had finally started going to school that the painting I had seen nearly every weekend was thrust back into the front of my mind.

Sitting in a grade school art class was not exactly the place I imagine I would have the first taste of my reality being dismantled, but it was nonetheless. Our teacher was holding up printed out copies of some famous paintings, Starry Night, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and then a picture that confused me to the very core. Why on Earth would my art teacher have a copy of the portrait of my grandparents? It turns out that the painting was Grant Wood’s American Gothic and instead of being found only in the home I had visited frequently in my early years it could probably be found in thousands of homes. Perhaps if I had asked my parents or grandparents about the picture instead of just going with my original explanation I could have spared myself the existential crisis. I’m not bitter or embarrassed though because now every time I happen across the painting in the wild I will always be rushed by the memory of my childhood mistake and loving grandparents I’ve lost.