Kirkepiscatoid

From the NYT:

Andrew Wyeth, one of the most popular and also most lambasted artists in the history of American art, a reclusive linchpin in a colorful family dynasty of artists whose precise realist views of hardscrabble rural life became icons of national culture and sparked endless debates about the nature of modern art, died Friday at his home in Chadds Ford. He was 91.

"Hardscrabble rural life".

That is probably why his paintings are so meaningful to me. My generation of rural life was not so hardscrabble growing up (just a little financially dicey) but for my Depression-era grandparents, those images were very real, and I saw ghosts of those images in old family photographs and family recollections.

My favorite Wyeth painting is the one above, "Master Bedroom." (It's in my OWN bedroom, actually!) In fact, I have a photograph of the late Mr. Willis Woo Dog sleeping on MY bed with my print of "Master Bedroom" in the background, in a similar pose. I'll have to dig that one out of the archives!

The starkness and poverty of the room is striking, yet the family dog is sleeping as if royalty. It is a scene I have seen many times over in all the homes of my life, on chenille bedspreads, hand stitched quilts, and other understated bed covers. Something about that sleeping dog, just as content in stark nothingness as in the most palatial home, hits deep with me.

His work has always been a reminder of the beauty within stark reality, and I honestly mourn the loss of this type of talent. That recognition is hard to come by.