By Snejana Farberov

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Budding North Carolina artist Beth Feeback dropped by a local Goodwill store recently and stumbled upon a pair of large paintings for $10 each, which she intended to cover with primer and use as blank canvases, but luckily for her, she did not follow through with her plan.

Feeback, 45, of Concord, discovered to her surprise that one of the artworks that she snapped up for a song is called Vertical Diamond by notable 20th century artist Ilya Bolotowsky, which has been valued at between $15,000 and $20,000 by the renowned auction house Sotheby’s.

The 45-year-old artist came across the paintings on April 28 when she and her husband, Steve, 35, were on their way to display their own funky, vibrant canvases at an art fair in Oak Ridge, ABC News has reported.

Lucky find: North Carolina artist Beth Feeback stumbled upon two canvasses by Ilya Bolotowsky while shopping at a Goodwill store

Lucky find: North Carolina artist Beth Feeback stumbled upon two canvasses by Ilya Bolotowsky while shopping at a Goodwill store

The day was chilly and Feeback, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, had not dressed warmly enough. She remembered having passed a Goodwill store on the way to the fair, so she decided to make a dash there and pick up a blanket or afghan.

After buying a throw and a pair of gloves, Feeback spotted two large red, white and blue paintings. Aesthetically, the 45-year-old artist, who specializes in whimsical animal iconography, was not drawn to the artworks, which to her appeared to possess a musty 1970s quality.

‘I thought they would be awesome canvases. They were $9.99 a piece and I just thought they would be great to just draw on them and paint over them because I didn’t like them as paintings,’ Feeback recalled.

‘So I was like, ‘I’m going to paint big cat heads or whatever.’’

Close call: Feeback planned to cover the $10 paintings with primer and paint cats over them

Close call: Feeback planned to cover the $10 paintings with primer and paint cats over them

Quirky art: Feeback specializes in vibrant, whimsical portraits of cats and other critters done in acrylic 

Before she had a chance to deface the artworks to make way for a feline portrait, however, Feeback showed them to a friend, Leanne Pizio, who noticed labels on the backs of the canvases that read: ‘Weatherspoon Art Gallery. University of North Carolina – Greensboro.’

‘The Weatherspoon gets some big-name artists,’ Mrs Feeback recalled Pizio saying, according to the Charlotte Observer.

Convinced that she should research the paintings before slathering their surface with primer, Feeback put them away in her art studio, where they collected dust until mid-June.

More than once during that time Feeback considered painting over the artworks, but something stopped her. Finally, the Concord resident powered up the Google search engine, and the first result that came up led to a Wikipedia page dedicated to the artist Ilya Bolotowsky. 

Leading artist: Ilya Bolotowsky is known as one of the most prominent abstract artists of the 20th century

Leading artist: Ilya Bolotowsky is known as one of the most prominent abstract artists of the 20th century

Bolotowsky was a prominent abstract painter who fled his native Russia as a teenager and settled in Brooklyn, New York, in 1923. He died in 1981 at age 74, living behind a significant body of work in geometric abstraction and cubism.

‘I was like, ‘Holy crap, I better get those up off the floor over there,’’ Feeback said, referring to the pair of paintings.

‘And then it just went crazy. When I saw what it was I thought, ‘This painting has got to be worth something, but what do I do now? I don’t know anything about selling a valuable painting.’

On the advice of friends, Feeback contacted Sotheby’s in New York, sending photos of the painting and the labels on the front and back.

Experts at the auction house broke the news that Feeback had stumbled upon a small treasure, and asked her to send them the painting.

She and her husband shipped the Bolotowsky canvas via UPS, insuring it for $20,000, she said.

Meanwhile, a Facebook friend contacted a curator at the Weatherspoon Gallery, who provided Beth with documents of the artwork from the 1979 Collectors Show.

Those documents revealed that a now-defunct textile company had owned both paintings. When the manufacturer went bust, a married couple had bought the canvasses at a liquidation sale to decorate their basement, but the room turned out to be too small.  

They tried to sell them at a church yard sale on April 28, but when no one jumped on the offer, they took them to the Goodwill store, which specializes in second-hand items sold at reduced costs.

As luck would have it, Feeback showed up at that store that same afternoon and found them.

The 45-year-old Concord painter said she contacted the couple who used to own the Bolotowsky work and told them about its true worth.

Rather than ask for a share of the artwork’s value, its previous owners accepted Feeback’s offer to paint them a portrait of their late cat, Buttons.

Sotheby’s will auction off the painting on September 21, but it could potentially get delayed until March.

Feeback said she plans to use the money to pay her mounting credit card bills, and whatever is left she plans to invest in a tricycle since owning one has always been a dream of hers.