Andrew Wyeth had been an artist that the public loved and the critics loved to hate.
I am on the "loved" side. If it wasn't for Andrew Wyeth I don't know if I would have found art.
When I was about five or six I was looking through a book my mother had about American artists. This was the only art book I can remember my family having at that time. I came upon an austere, somber painting of a cross with old white rags blowing in the wind against a barren landscape. I don't know why this painting moved me the way it did but it did .
That painting was "The Scarecrow" by Andrew Wyeth and I have kept that book with me for decades.
I have been lucky to be only about an hour from the Brandywine River Museum that houses a wonderful collection of Andrew's, N.C's and Jamie Wyeth's (love their work too) works and I have gone to the museum often.
So today I was feeling melancholy as I drove around the countryside of Bucks county Pa. to pick up my eggs from a local farmer (I live along the Delaware River on the NJ side). The sky was sooooo grey , the forests tall and vacant and there were remnants of snow on the hills, and I felt I was in a Wyeth painting.
He lived a long and enviable life. A life consumed with the brush. We are so fortunate that the best part of him will be with us for lifetimes to come!
