ANDREW WYETH QUOTES

“I dream a lot. I do more painting when I’m not painting. It’s in the subconscious.”

“I prefer winter and fall when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it – the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it – the whole story doesn’t show.”

“I search for the realness, the real feeling of a subject, all the texture around it… I always want to see the third dimension of something… I want to go right through the surface and see the real structure beneath.”

“I work in a realistic manner because I don’t feel confident enough to invent. I pull things out of reality, transpose them onto a different surface or setting, and create a new reality.”

“To have the vocation of being a painter is to face up to the daily challenge of interpreting reality through one’s own eyes and transforming it into something that can be seen by others.”

“The great artists don’t just copy a scene, they interpret it and through that interpretation make you feel what they felt.”

“Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It’s what everything else isn’t.”

“One’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes.”

“The texture is the surface, not the substance.”

“I see all too often in my own work where color and texture overpower the subject.”

“I think one’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes.”

“Painting is a way of standing up, fighting back.”

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape – the loneliness of it – the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”

“The most powerful part of a photograph is what’s not there.”

“Art to me is seeing. I think you have got to use your eyes, as well as your emotion, and one without the other just doesn’t work.”

“I’m a very simple person. You’ll be amazed how simple I really am.”

“We can never go back again, that’s why it’s hard to choose.”

“The negative is as important as the positive. What is contained in the photographic image is as ephemeral as years’ long organic processes.”

“The world seems to be crashing around you. I could see that painting could be a sort of portable heaven.”

“Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.”

“If you were born in a lab, that’s where you would live.”

“The things I’m _passionate_ about, I hate.”

“The one that bugs me is that if you put a body in water, within a week there’s nothing left except the bones.”

“The smell of theosophy and Ballantine’s.”

“You don’t paint big, heroic pictures when you’re balanced in the landscape. You have to be on the edge and looking down and it’s a real tightrope; you could fall off at any moment.”

“Some wonder if any of them will ever grow up.”

“To be really great, you have to be a little afraid.”

“Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.”

“Texas is ugly but the Pre-Raphaelite era with the apple trees – I thought Texas had more trees than any country, but North Carolina has more.”

“I search for the realness, the real feeling of a subject, all the texture around it… I always want to see the third dimension of something… I want to know if I can put divine inspiration into it.”