MARILYN CORNWELL: Marilyn's Photos - Oct 19 2026

It is Monday so I go to a watercolour painting class. Some people in the group are amazing artists with really beautiful watercolour paintings. Most of us are not in that group. On the other hand, we don't paint pictures like the one below, either.

What to think of this very weird and strange painting? It is the prize piece in the Museum of Bad Art, having inspired the Museum's existence.

The Museum of Bad Art says the "pieces" in the MOBA collection range from the work of talented artists that have gone awry to works of exuberant, although crude, execution by artists barely in control of the brush. What they all have in common is a special quality that sets them apart in one way or another from the merely incompetent."

Go to Poor Traits and this picture is the one that inspired MOBA. It turns out that the painting was actually commissioned to remember an aunt who had passed away. It hung in the living room of her relatives until they sold the house. It seemed to disappear during the estate clearance. Not much was thought of it by the family. It turns out that it didn't go directly to the garbage, someone had acquired it and had the painting for 5 years and then did put it in the garbage. That's when Sott Wilson, OBA's original curator, spotted it and MOBA was "born."
Relatives recognized the painting when the museum was written up in a newspaper article5, 5and became charter members of the museum. They filled in the story of their aunt and the background of the painting.

The description for the next painting is:

"Dorothy clicked her heels three times and realized immediately upon opening her eyes that she had returned to an unfamiliar part of Kansas."

MOBA has locations in Boston and Quebec City. There could be a location in every single town on the planet, don't you think?

The curious and strange website is here.