13: We Used to Think Hay Bales Were Put There by Farmers for Andrew Wyeth to Paint
1. My recent experience in D.C. seeing the Andrew Wyeth exhibit at the National Gallery of Art was so visceral that I found myself holding my head back while looking at Wind from the Sea as if it was blowing on me.
2. I had been wanting to see a Wyeth exhibit for more than three decades and I cried when I finally did. “ I wanted to stretch out in the spot of sunlight and open the trunk in McVey’s Barn, take the apples from the porch in Frostbitten and put them on the empty plate in Groundhog Day, drape a favorite coat over the empty hanger on the porch in Looking Out Looking In. I wanted to press my nose up close to the window that looked onto another window looking onto a green field, or jump through Olsen’s Door and run in the wheat colored grass, trying not to trip on the bucket in Weatherside.” More HERE.
3. As a loud yawner waking up in a friend’s house in D.C., I wondered for a moment whether my loud yawns might be mistaken by others in the house as something orgasmic.
4. And I kept wondering if it was the ring of emails coming in or wind chimes in the breeze I was hearing.
5. Deal or ordeal?
6. Too much of a good thing: 3 Ss and 2 blanks in my last Scrabble game became a block to making an actual word.
7. I first fell in love with Wyeth’s work through the painting Groundhog Day that hung in my first mother-in-law’s home. I tried to buy the print (before the internet) and never found it, but I did find and purchase Wyeth’s Writing Chair (pictured on the right) instead. Just a week or so ago, my four year old grandson Liam looked at it hanging on the wall and said, “Why you got that chair?”
8. I loved Wyeth’s work right away but only now realize that it was because it reminded me of myself, my future self who would come to live in the rural landscapes of Virginia. I also share Wyeth’s appeal for windows and doors, light and shadow and am continually drawn to photograph them.
9. As someone who grew up in an amusement park town, my body was drawn to the D.C. mall merry-go-round like a moth to a flame.
10. After seeing a life-like shiny metal tree in an outside sculpture garden, I saw a crane and asked Joe, “Is that an art installation or a construction site?”
11. I’m reading a book called The Book of Tea and realizing that Teasim, a religion of ecstheticism (the adoration of the beautiful among everyday fact) is my kind of religion. I especially felt that was true when I read passages like: Let us have a cup of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.
12. Two of my favorite things, tea and baths, are useless if they’re not really hot.
13. “My best watercolors are when I break loose and there are scratches, spit and mud.” – Andrew Wyeth
_________Thirteen Thursday
September 24th, 2014 11:21 pm
This is the second time this week I read ‘Bringing Back Sexy’: one overt, the last suggestive.
And they say, ‘if you like Alex Colville you may like Andrew Wyeth’ and ‘if you like Andrew Wyeth you may like Alex Colville’. Just say’n.
The extraordinary ordinary, you can call it Teasim, but I like lingering as you say “in the beautiful foolishness of things”.
September 25th, 2014 12:15 am
If I ever get the chance to see the exhibit, I will. I want to feel like a painting is blowing on me, too.
September 25th, 2014 5:44 am
I worked at Pearl Buck foundation where we had many local showings
September 25th, 2014 9:07 am
I checked out Alex Colville and am not drawn to his art nearly as much as Wyeth’s, although in reading about him, they say he painted in the same realism style. I don’t think Colville works the same with light and it’s the rural scenes that speak to me and the sparseness.
September 25th, 2014 9:41 am
An emotionally touching 13 Coll.
When art moves you to tears it is touching your soul. You’ve touched mine with your artistic writing about it all.
Music, also an art, can do the same thing.
Also…
Hahaha @ # 5.
September 25th, 2014 2:02 pm
Isn’t it wonderful how a work of art can speak to your soul? When I saw Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” in Paris, I was mesmerized. My friends had to literally pull me away. My T13
September 25th, 2014 4:59 pm
Great post for a great artist. Thanks.
http://otherworlddiner.blogspot.com/2014/09/in-celebration-of-writingthirteen-great.html
September 25th, 2014 6:16 pm
Oh, he is my fav! I have “Around the Corner” over an antique bed which is dressed in white eyelet linens in our guest bedroom. Then there is the Olson homeplace from “Christina’s World” on the mantel of the LR fireplace. I would love a couple of others, “Jupiter,” one of NC’s called “Silent Fisherman” and one of Andrew’s big, round full moon…the name escapes me.
September 25th, 2014 6:19 pm
Oh, I just looked it up. Around the Corner is a new favorite! We overheard a women at the exhibit talking about the places she knew in his paintings. She comes from his hometown in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. We want to go there and visit the museum. The Olsen house is in Maine, which would make a nice visit too.
I just learned that Faraway is of his son Jamie (also a painter)!
September 25th, 2014 9:31 pm
I don’t see the similarity either. And in the realm of Fine Art they’re not even kissing cousins. But I do appreciate the passion in their art equally.
September 26th, 2014 12:53 am
check out “Jupiter” when you have a minute, and there is a delightful one of the apple orchard that makes me think about you 2 lovebirds! don’t know the name of it ((may simply be apple orchard”), but I recall it vividly. I gave my niece a framed print of the dog in the master bedroom bed several years ago. I adore all of the wyeths!
September 26th, 2014 5:39 am
It was great to read more about your love affair with Wyeth…..What a wonderful trip, my dear Colleen…..I hope you do get to go to Pennsylvania……And, I am looking forward to seeing your pictures from The Hirshhorn, at some point……
September 26th, 2014 10:47 am
I took pictures at The Hirshhorn with you in mind, Naomi!
September 30th, 2014 2:39 pm
Love this thirteen. The post has an Autumn feel to it.
Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them —
The summer flowers depart —
Sit still — as all transform’d to stone,
Except your musing heart.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning