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

I'm convinced that the best solutions are often the ones that are counterintuitive - that challenge conventional thinking - and end in breakthroughs. It is always easier to do things the same old way ... why change? To fight this, keep your dissatisfaction index high and break with tradition. Don't be too quick to accept the way things are being done. Question whether there's a better way. Very often you will find that once you make this break from the usual way - and incidentally, this is probably the hardest thing to do - and start on a new track your horizon of new thoughts immediately broadens. New ideas flow in like water. Always keep your interests broad - don't let your mind be stunted by a limited view. — Nathaniel J. 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

Warhol had a huge effect on me. It wasn't that I sought it out. It was more of a natural evolution. — Jamie Wyeth

The whole consideration of - ... am I being compared as such and such's grandson and son - that was minuscule compared to the problems I was having just working ... I didn't have time to start worrying about who I was in the eyes of the public. — Jamie 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

Growing up in Chadds Ford, Pa., I shuttled between studio space in my parents' house and my grandfather's studio just up the hill. It was a solitary childhood, but I loved it. — Jamie 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

The real kiss of death - particularly with my father - is the extraordinary popularity of his work. — Jamie Wyeth

With a creature, there's no voice, so the eyes become the voice. When you get eye-to-eye contact, a real connection, it's limitless - and incredibly thrilling. — Jamie 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

I began drawing when I was nearly 3, and after finishing the sixth grade, I left school to paint and was tutored at home. My father didn't think a formal education was necessary for a painter. — Jamie 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

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

Nothing is more uninteresting than completely knowing somebody, being totally at ease. — Jamie Wyeth

We lived in my father's studio, so there were the brushes and the pencils and the paint. So it would - it was very natural for me to want to paint, I think, and it was never a question. — Jamie Wyeth

The things that I paint are things that I know very well. — Jamie Wyeth

I view anything on this farm as model. I actually painted Union Rags as a yearling. — Jamie Wyeth

As a child, I always wanted to live on a boat. — Jamie Wyeth

Oddly enough, my grandfather probably had more of an influence on me than my father. — Jamie Wyeth

I paint every day. I really have no hobbies. That's all I do. — Jamie Wyeth

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

I thought to live on an island was like living on a boat. Islands intrigue me. You can see the perimeters of your world. It's a microcosm. — Jamie Wyeth

Art was a way of life in my family. My grandfather, N.C. Wyeth, who died a year before I was born, had been a prominent painter. So was my father, Andrew. My two aunts and two of my uncles also earned a living as painters. — Jamie 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

My father was a great inspiration, and there was a bit of competition between us. He'd work in his studio, and I'd work in my space, but the door was always half open. — Jamie Wyeth

There is only a black fence
and a wide field and a barn of Wyeth red.
The smell of anger chokes the air.
Ravens of September rain descend.
Some say a mad mad hermit man lived here
talking to himself and the woodchuck.
But he's gone. No reason. No sense.
He just wandered off one day,
past the onions, past the fence.
Forget the letters. Forget love.
Troy is nothing more than
a black finger of charcoal
frozen in lake ice.
And near where the owl watches
and the old bear dreams,
the parapet of memory burns to the ground
taking heaven with it. — Mark Z. Danielewski

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

I'm a very strange painter. I don't wake up one day and say, 'God, isn't this a fantastic day, I'd better get out and paint!' I think my father's more that way, because he's very fast. — Jamie Wyeth

My aunt Caroline was really a character. She lived and worked in my grandfather's old house and even wore some of his clothes. — Jamie Wyeth

My sketchbooks are usually just a line on one page or a circle, which to most people must be totally meaningless. But to me, they are very important to the thing I am working on. — Jamie 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

Interesting is when one can produce a picture that is pretty, but with undercurrents. The metaphor that comes to mind is in the poems of Robert Frost. — Jamie Wyeth

It's the hardest work in the world to try not to work. - N.C. Wyeth — Mason Currey

My father's like - it's as if he was transparent. He's a man of great mystery, whereas apparently N.C. Wyeth was 6-feet, 2-inches tall, with a booming voice. I think that's reflected in their work. — Jamie Wyeth

Painting is such an individual profession. I'm not performing. There's no audience. — Jamie Wyeth

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

Dance looks absurd on film, I think, like little puppets moving around. — Jamie Wyeth

Painting is a field that attracts a lot of lazy people. You can just sort of sit and wait for things to come to you. I know a lot of painters who'll sit and chat it up all night. But God, I just can't do that. — Jamie Wyeth

Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty."
Gideon Wyeth:"Why?"
Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly, but I can do something about thirsty. — Orson Scott Card

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

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

I never knew my grandfather. He died the year before I was born. But as a child, he did, of course, those wonderful illustrations, 'Treasure Island,' and whatnot. — Jamie 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

My father brought me a box of books once when I was about three and a half or four. I remember the carton they were in and the covers with illustrations by Newell C. Wyeth. — Paula Fox

Treasure Island is completed! The entire set of seventeen canvases without one break in my enthusiasm and spirit. Better in every quality than anything I ever did. — N. C. 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

The great thing about a painter is that he or she lives on - I mean, Andrew Wyeth is more in his paintings than he was walking around. — Jamie Wyeth

Maine likes to call itself 'America's Vacationland.' For many artists, though, it's the office. Since the 19th century, painters from all over the country - including Edward Hopper, Alex Katz, John Marin, Fairfield Porter, Neil Welliver and Andrew Wyeth - have spent large chunks of time there. — Terry Teachout

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

I'm an odd portrait painter in that I'm not just interested in human faces. I consider almost all of my paintings to be portraits. — Jamie Wyeth

When painting portraits a lot of people say, 'Why not get a photograph of the person?' Photography is wonderful and it is an art form in itself, but ... my portrait is a culmination of elements ... a truer image of a person than just the 'click' of a snapshot. — Jamie Wyeth

I had been elected to the National Academy of Design in New York, and one of the requirements was that you give a portrait, a self-portrait of yourself. — Jamie Wyeth

Really, if you get to know pigs, they're very moody. They're not sweet little animals at all. That's what I like about them. They get depressed; they get into these snits. They're carnivorous. — Jamie Wyeth

Painting and illustration cannot be mixed - one cannot merge from one into the other. — N. C. 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

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

My interest in painting is recording things. I think of myself as almost a documentary filmmaker ... I've gotten into some curious situations ... — Jamie 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

To me, this was an oxymoron, doing a painting of a dancer. Dancers are always moving. — Jamie 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

When I paint a portrait I want to know more than just the looks of the person. I want to know how they live and what their feelings are ... It then becomes more than just physiognomy, but the feel of the person. — Jamie Wyeth

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

I hope the time will never come when I shall feel satisfied. To reach the goal of one's ambitions must be tragic. — N. C. 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

I spent a lot of time alone; I left school to be tutored. So, most of my companions were animals. It's as simple as that. I knew more animals than I did people. — Jamie 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

My father's work is rather mysterious, not much said, and my grandfather's is robust, bursting off the walls. — Jamie 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 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

Painting is as difficult as brain surgery. It's not that relaxing. But that's the discipline. — Jamie 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

The problem with having the name Wyeth is that immediately, when people hear the name, they all of a sudden see weathered barns in a field or something. — Jamie Wyeth

I'm a very boring person, and all I do is want to paint and to record what I feel moves me or what interests me, and that can be in the form of a pig or in the form of President Kennedy. — Jamie Wyeth

The quality I most loved in Warhol - it was his sense of wonder. I mean, he was - absolutely everything was, 'Oh my God, isn't that wonderful!'. You know, and so it wasn't that he was cool and kind of calculated at all. He was very childlike. — Jamie Wyeth

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

Most of my reading is based on what I'm working on. I did a series of paintings based on the seven deadly sins, so I read Dante and then Milton's 'Paradise Lost.' That was a bit hard going. — Jamie Wyeth

After being an Impressionist, Cubist, and an Abstract Expressionist, I was influenced by realistic artists, including Andrew Wyeth in the late '50s, and I haven't changed my style since. — Robert Bateman

Painting to me is addictive. These are moments when it is inspiring, but they are few and far between. I keep my tools sharpened for the moment when things do start clicking, but that doesn't happen a lot. I really have to push myself sometimes. Painting is a profession in which it is very easy to be lazy, particularly if you have any degree of success. — Jamie Wyeth

I'm a terrible technician, and I have a very hard time painting. — Jamie Wyeth

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

I have copies of the books my grandfather illustrated for Scribner's in each house. I read those books all the time. — Jamie Wyeth

Everything I paint is a portrait, whatever the subject. — Jamie Wyeth

My father, whose work I adore ... was down working on little things of grass and dead birds. Well, that didn't interest me. As an 8-year-old kid, I wanted knights in armor and so forth. — Jamie Wyeth

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

My pencil is like a fencer's foil. — 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

I'm not just interested in fascinating faces or trees. I want to bore in deeper. — Jamie Wyeth

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

I have hundreds of art books and the biographies of artists I love, such as Thomas Eakins and Edgar Degas. — Jamie Wyeth

If you paint a man leaning over your own back must ache — N. C. Wyeth

I learned from a longtime farmer that pigs enjoy soothing music. — Jamie Wyeth