Jamie Wyeth Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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.

All my problems and anxieties certainly come out of my work, and that’s the way it should be. Other than that, relationships with people I find very, very simple.

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.

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

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.

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

There’s a quality of life in Maine which is this singular and unique. I think. It’s absolutely a world onto itself.

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

Being a painter is the only profession where you have to stand there with all your shortcomings on the wall.

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.

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.

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.

I paint every day. I really have no hobbies. That’s all I do.

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.

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.

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.

Animals are not cute. They are disturbing. Pigs do eat their young. Actually, I hate pigs. I just happen to have some who are friends of mine.

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.

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

I’m not just interested in fascinating faces or trees. I want to bore in deeper.

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

The real kiss of death – particularly with my father – is the extraordinary popularity of his work.

The things that I paint are things that I know very well.

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.

To me, dance is so ethereal and elusive, so much of an illusion. After a performance, that’s it. With vocals and music, you have good recordings.

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.

I’m a terrible technician, and I have a very hard time painting.

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.

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

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.

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