Lee Godie Canvas Painting, ca. 1985
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GUEST:
My husband and I were at a thrift store looking for filing cabinets, and he came across this, and the colors really spoke to him. Funny thing is, the thrift store owner said a lot of people looked at that, but I've already checked it out, and it's not a Picasso. And so we kind of giggled at that.
APPRAISER:
And how much did you pay?
GUEST:
$25.
APPRAISER:
Well, the artist Lee Godie is a wildly colorful, outsider artist who spent most of her life in Chicago. She was born in 1908, but didn't really start working or painting until late '60s. So she was older in age. She had been through a divorce and had lost two children. And she actually elected to live outside and became kind of a very popular folk hero in Chicago.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
Started selling her work at the door of the Art Institute of Chicago. And she died in 1994. This probably would have been painted in the 1980s or so. She used any variety of mediums to paint and was notoriously guarded about personal information. And tended to sell to friends of hers. Especially Chicago-area individuals are very interested in her work. She's heavily collected in that region in particular. And this example, at auction I would expect it to fetch somewhere in the region of $2,000 to $3,000.
GUEST:
Wow. That's great. (chuckles)
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