On May 16 from 9:30 to 2 pm painters will have access to Keurner farm in Chadds Ford, Pa., where Andrew Wyeth often painted. The Brandywine River Museum offers this opportunity every year, but this is the first year I can take advantage of it.
I'm going to need to pack a lot of sandwiches--painting makes me hungry.
But I want to prepare in other ways too.
I love looking at watercolor paintings-- you should see my Pinterest pages!
But of late it's Wyeth and Turner--will I ever get to Margate?--who have been breaking my heart with their mastery.
The subtlety of the color, the mark making: that's what I want to practice.
Plan is to copy watercolors from the Brandywine's show Abstract Flash: Unseen Andrew Wyeth.
I am lucky to have the catalog; it's impossible to get now, weirdly.
That show moved me like nothing else I can remember, except maybe a Cezanne exhibit. I stood in front of these Wyeth "sketches"-- none are titled--and was dumbstruck.
I wish the catalog said what kind of paper he painted on. But I read elsewhere that he liked to paint on Bristol paper.
And that fits: the paper in the show was very smooth.
I tried to copy a couple, on CP, so I had to use a lot more water to move the paint. Going to have to get some Bristol, pronto.
It's a start.
I may make a Wyeth palette to bring, if I can figure out what he used ... It seems very limited.
These are my copies, though these are both ME not PA. PA copies are next with their luscious range of browns.
Wyeth's painting and my palette.