My favorite painting would have to be one of the many done by artist Andrew Wyeth of his neighbor Helga. Most of the paintings were done in tempera, dry brush, watercolor, and pencil. I honestly don’t think I could pick just one of the paintings, because his work is so real and precise that it draws you in. I do think that doing his work in tempera gave him a huge advantage in being very detailed and durable. These paintings were done over a time period of 15 years, without anyone knowing or seeing his work except Helga and himself. He believed so strongly in his vision of Helga and what she represented that he didn’t even let his wife know (I bet she wasn’t too happy when she saw some of the paintings). Within those 15 years he did create I believe it was over 240 different pieces that represented Helga in many ways and in a sense paid homage to her life and her struggle. Andrew Wyeth’s use of different types of paint allowed him to experiment and find that key to each image of Helga he wanted to draw upon.
In the articles I have read about the Helga paintings it is said that Wyeth did not mean to be psychological about his painting of this woman, instead he wanted to be able to focus and bring focus to certain elements when combined on her body, such as that of light or dark, the way the leaves would cover her face. This may be true for the artist but when I look at these paintings I can’t help but to be more and more ready to feel what the artist was feeling, to understand how a woman could sit for hours and hours of modeling to accomplish 240 paintings in 15 years. I think maybe when I look at these paintings I am hoping for an underlying monolougue, something that indicates there was a deeper relationship then just the model and artist. So needless to say that when I did find out that Helga was a family friend my beliefs and thoughts about the painting were a tad bit shattered. But these paintings did help me in realizing that art is what you make of it and what you see and feel when you look at it from your own point of view. I think this exercise was the best way to help me understand difference in emotion between what I feel and think in my life and what the artist felt and saw within his own.
While researching about the “Helga” paintings by Andrew Wyeth and learned that he and Helga still are close and she is a care giver for him and his wife in their older age. It is amazing that art had made such a connection with these otherwise strangers. It is a bond between the artist and the model that we may not see but you can feel it in the way he used his paints and each brush stroke was important, precise, and calculated!!
In the articles I have read about the Helga paintings it is said that Wyeth did not mean to be psychological about his painting of this woman, instead he wanted to be able to focus and bring focus to certain elements when combined on her body, such as that of light or dark, the way the leaves would cover her face. This may be true for the artist but when I look at these paintings I can’t help but to be more and more ready to feel what the artist was feeling, to understand how a woman could sit for hours and hours of modeling to accomplish 240 paintings in 15 years. I think maybe when I look at these paintings I am hoping for an underlying monolougue, something that indicates there was a deeper relationship then just the model and artist. So needless to say that when I did find out that Helga was a family friend my beliefs and thoughts about the painting were a tad bit shattered. But these paintings did help me in realizing that art is what you make of it and what you see and feel when you look at it from your own point of view. I think this exercise was the best way to help me understand difference in emotion between what I feel and think in my life and what the artist felt and saw within his own.
While researching about the “Helga” paintings by Andrew Wyeth and learned that he and Helga still are close and she is a care giver for him and his wife in their older age. It is amazing that art had made such a connection with these otherwise strangers. It is a bond between the artist and the model that we may not see but you can feel it in the way he used his paints and each brush stroke was important, precise, and calculated!!
1 comment:
Ooh what an interesting story behind this painting! I'm going to do some research about this story because it seems quite interesting!
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