Friday, May 02, 2025

keurner farm prep

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.

3 comments:

RH Carpenter said...

What a fantastic opportunity! The Cincinnati Art Museum had a Wyeth exhibit years ago and I actually cried when viewing them - the absolute mastery and belief in each brushstroke really made me emotional. There were one paintings in acrylic to show the front and back of the paper because he painted on both sides at times - and both sides were amazing!

laura said...

It's so funny you say that. I stopped in front of the first painting in this exhibit .. and cried.
That brushwork really does have emotional power and authenticity, and immediacy.

laura said...

I wish I knew more about his materials ... There's not much info out there. I love the palette too-- the sepia and umbers. I wish they'd let us go back in fall and winter!