Andrew Wyeth died at 91 - (1917-2009)

Andrew Wyeth, who was an icon of American painting, has passed away on Friday 16th January at the age of 91. He was a controversial painter who generated a lot of media interest during his lifetime. See his Obituary at the Philadelphia Enquirer and the New York Times.





He portrayed the hidden melancholy of the people and landscapes of Pennsylvania's Brandywine Valley and coastal Maine in works such as "Christina's World."



These are some quotes of 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.
  
• At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery.
  
• 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.
  
• I don't really have studios. I wander around around people's attics, out in fields, in cellars, anyplace I find that invites me.
• I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious.
  
• 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.
  
• 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.
  
• I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn't show.
  
• 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.
  
• 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.
  
• 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.
  
• If you clean it up, get analytical, all the subtle joy and emotion you felt in the first place goes flying out the window.
  
• It's a moment that I'm after, a fleeting moment, but not a frozen moment.
  
• It's all in how you arrange the thing... the careful balance of the design is the motion.
  
• One's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes.
  
• To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me.
  
• 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.