Knowing that there is so much love, prayers and virtual hugs out there has really meant a lot to me.
Andrew Wyeth passed away last week.
His art has influenced many of us in one way or another along our paths as artists.
The Wyeths were subject of many late night discussions on our recent painting trip to Maine.
Andrew and his family have homes in the area of Maine where we were painting. It seemed that each of the artists present had their favorite Wyeth and many of them are influenced to some extent by their work.
Untitled, mixed media collage/color xerox, Frank Gardner © 1982
I dug out this old piece of mine from my RISD days. This was a freshman foundation project that I did in '82. and it is influenced by the Andrew Wyeth painting "Christina's World".
We were working with collage between layers of glass and then color xeroxing them. Each generation of xerox having a higher contrast to it. Breaking it down to the basic form. I don't have the original here, but I have this version, which is a color xerox of the original, and it has a section of it that had been xeroxed two times in the original piece and therefore it would be three times in this version. There are lots of different ways that the elements in this collage relate to each other. The breaking down of the original Wyeth painting by the xerox process. The breaking down of the structure of house on the hill with the architectural drawing of a similar building. The way Muybridge used multiple cameras to capture the movements of his subjects. The same goes for the Degas drawing that he gridded out, breaking it down to the structure of the figure. And so on. The painting being simplified by the xerox process.
This was done a long time ago, so I have a hard time remembering everything that I was thinking at the moment.
I just wanted to share it as an example of Andrew's influence dating way back in my artistic journey.
