Andrew Wyeth Quotes & Sayings

Most artists look for something fresh to paint; frankly I find that quite boring. For me it is much more exciting to find fresh meaning in something familiar. — Andrew Wyeth

And, of course, I began drawing so much - wild, undisciplined pencil drawings and watercolors of knights battling and such. — Andrew Wyeth

Don't overdo it, don't underdo it. Do it just on the line. — Andrew Wyeth

One's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes. — Andrew Wyeth

Well, being the youngest child and frail, I was left alone a great deal of the time. — Andrew Wyeth

If somehow I can, before I leave this earth, combine my absolutely mad freedom and excitement with truth, then I will have done something. — Andrew Wyeth

To have all your life's work and to have them along the wall, it's like walking in with no clothes on. It's terrible. — Andrew Wyeth

At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery. — Andrew Wyeth

I've tried never to be easily satisfied, and I've been painting like fury now for forty years ... I have a feeling. You paint about as far as your emotions go, and that's about it. — Andrew Wyeth

I think a person permeates a spot, and a lost presence makes the environment timeless to me, keeps an area alive. It pulsates because of that. — Andrew Wyeth

If it [talent] isn't strong enough to take the gaff of real training, then it's not worth much. — Andrew Wyeth

The most irritating experience for an artist is to have his work criticized before it is finished. — Andrew Wyeth

My aim is not to exhibit craft, but rather to submerge it, and make it rightfully the handmaiden of beauty, power and emotional content. — Andrew Wyeth

I had whooping cough when I was very young, which left me with bronchial problems, and I would always pick up colds. I was very thin and nervous so my father and mother took me out of school and had me tutored at home. — Andrew Wyeth

What you have to do is break all the rules. — Andrew Wyeth

Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to forget about what you are doing - then a work of art may happen. — Andrew Wyeth

I think one's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes. I see no reason for painting but that. If I have anything to offer, it is my emotional contact with the place where I live and the people I do. — Andrew Wyeth

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future - the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. — Andrew Wyeth

I am not a juicy painter. — Andrew Wyeth

I've never studied the Japanese. That's something that must have crept in there. But the Japanese are my biggest clients. They seem to like the elemental quality. — Andrew Wyeth

I love to study the many things that grow below the corn stalks and bring them back to the studio to study the color. If one could only catch that true color of nature - the very thought of it drives me mad. — Andrew Wyeth

I'm a secretive bastard. I would never let anybody watch me painting ... it would be like somebody watching you have sex - painting is that personal to me. — Andrew Wyeth

I'm not at all interested in painting the object just as it is in nature. Certainly I'm much more interested in the mood of a thing than the truth of a thing. — Andrew Wyeth

With watercolour, you can pick up the atmosphere, the temperature, the sound of snow shifting through the trees or over the ice of a small pond or against a windowpane. Watercolour perfectly expresses the free side of my nature. — Andrew Wyeth

I can't work completely out of my imagination. I must put my foot in a bit of truth; and then I can fly free. — Andrew Wyeth

Believe in yourself and believe in love. Love something. — Andrew Wyeth

It's all in how you arrange the thing ... the careful balance of the design is the motion. — Andrew Wyeth

I don't think that there is anything that is really magical unless it has a terrifying quality. — Andrew Wyeth

If you clean it up, get analytical, all the subtle joy and emotion you felt in the first place goes flying out the window. — Andrew Wyeth

I surrendered to a world of my imagination, reenacting all those wonderful tales my father would read aloud to me. I became a very active reader, especially history and Shakespeare. — Andrew Wyeth

You think you're developing and getting better and then you see something you did years ago. Looking at your early work.. sometimes it has a depth that surprises you. — Andrew Wyeth

I get letters from people about my work. The thing that pleases me most is that my work touches their feelings. In fact, they don't talk about the paintings. They end up telling me the story of their life or how their father died. — Andrew Wyeth

My aim is to escape from the medium with which I work; to leave no residue of technical mannerisms to stand between my expression and the observer. To seek freedom through significant form and design rather than through the diversion of so-called free and accidental brush handling. — Andrew Wyeth

I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape
the lonliness of it
the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it
the whole story dosen't show. — Andrew Wyeth

I have a good friend, Rudolf Serkin, the pianist, a very sensitive man. I was talking to him one day backstage after a concert and I told him that I thought he had played particularly sensitively that day. I said, "You know, many pianists are brilliant, they strike the keys so well, but somehow you are different." "Ah," he said, "I don't think you should ever strike a key. You should pull the keys with your fingers." — Andrew Wyeth

To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me. — Andrew Wyeth

My struggle is to preserve that abstract flash - like something you caught out of the corner of your eye, but in the picture you can look at it directly. — Andrew Wyeth

I think you have to use your eyes as well as your emotion, and one without the other just doesn't work — Andrew Wyeth

I search for the realness, the real feeling of a subject, all the texture around it ... I always want to see the third dimension of something ... I want to come alive with the object. — Andrew Wyeth

God, I've frozen my ass off painting snow scenes! — Andrew Wyeth

I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious. — Andrew Wyeth

It's a shock for me to go through and see all those years of painting my life, which is very personal for me. It's a very difficult thing for an artist to look back at his work. — Andrew Wyeth

My pencil is like a fencer's foil. — Andrew Wyeth

When you lose your simplicity, you lose your drama. — Andrew Wyeth

I don't really have studios. I wander around around people's attics, out in fields, in cellars, anyplace I find that invites me. — Andrew Wyeth

It's a moment that I'm after, a fleeting moment, but not a frozen moment. — Andrew Wyeth

Really, I think one's art goes only as far and as deep as your love goes — Andrew Wyeth

I think anything like that-
which is contemplative, silent, shows a person alone-
people always feel sad. Is it because we've lost the art of being alone? — Andrew Wyeth

I wanted to get it all down, maybe out of my system. I wanted to be able to say, Everything's possible-if you believe and can get excited. — Andrew Wyeth