Saturday Is For Art

Late Thursday night, America lost one of its great artist, Andrew Wyeth. Wyeth was 91. Some of the news stories I read the other day about Wyeth's life were very interesting and familiar. I knew of Andrew Wyeth through his work going back to the 1950s. My father introduced me to his work as he was a fan of Wyeth's talent and work. But, what I find amusing are the detractors of his talent and his work. People in the art field calling him an illustrator, or even worse, that he did not know how to paint. To say Andrew Wyeth did not know how to paint, is like saying Ted Williams could not hit a baseball. But, in a free society, everyone gets to express their ideas. Just some people in the art world do not really have any of their own ideas, they play a game and call it thinking. The next time I travel to the Philadelphia area, I am going to try and pay a visit to his museum. I have admired his work for many many years and even have a copy of the paperback that contains the Helga drawings and paintings. He was a different man, a special person, who had his own vision and feelings for what he saw and painted. Whether we can get to the place where he stood is not as important as at least trying to understand his unique vision. He leaves the world a lot of beauty to look at.

I am going to post a few of my pencil drawings today as my tribute to this wonderful artist.