One of my favorite memories of the part of my childhood when I lived with my mother is when the family heirloom Pinkie & Blue boy paintings came to live with us. To this day, I don't quote know their story of how we got them. How valuable they were (if at all.)
My mom knew pretty much nothing about art, but she thought these were the originals and the most amazing paintings ever. She also thought they had been painted by the same artist (they weren't). All I knew, is that I wanted to be Pinkie. Only once I was moved out, living with my dad, and had gotten the internet, did I start to research the paintings I had stared up at in our living room.
While I doubt the paintings (inherited from my great-grandmother) were the cheap $30 print variety (Ethel was too much a snob for that kind of thing) I wonder what kind of reproduction they were for our family to assign so much value to them. And I wonder where they are now and if I'll ever see them again.
I think about how we decide to assign value to things all the time. The gold standard. Art. Reproductions of art. I suppose it's a habit from growing up in a Buddhist organization whose name means "value creation."
Maybe one day, I'll track them down and hang them in my house in Scotland.
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