Quotes from Jamie Wyeth

My father's like - it's as if he was transparent. He's a man of great mystery, whereas apparently N.C. Wyeth was 6-feet, 2-inches tall, with a booming voice. I think that's reflected in their work.

I just can't whip off a likeness of somebody.

Painting is such an individual profession. I'm not performing. There's no audience.

I'm a terrible technician, and I have a very hard time painting.

My father, whose work I adore... was down working on little things of grass and dead birds. Well, that didn't interest me. As an 8-year-old kid, I wanted knights in armor and so forth.

Dance looks absurd on film, I think, like little puppets moving around.

With a creature, there's no voice, so the eyes become the voice. When you get eye-to-eye contact, a real connection, it's limitless - and incredibly thrilling.

There's a quality of life in Maine which is this singular and unique. I think. It's absolutely a world onto itself.

The whole consideration of - ... am I being compared as such and such's grandson and son - that was minuscule compared to the problems I was having just working... I didn't have time to start worrying about who I was in the eyes of the public.

I have copies of the books my grandfather illustrated for Scribner's in each house. I read those books all the time.

I immediately doubt things if I become satisfied with them. Being satisfied by something is a real danger for me. I hope I never lose that. That would be death.

I had been elected to the National Academy of Design in New York, and one of the requirements was that you give a portrait, a self-portrait of yourself.

My father was a great inspiration, and there was a bit of competition between us. He'd work in his studio, and I'd work in my space, but the door was always half open.

Most of my reading is based on what I'm working on. I did a series of paintings based on the seven deadly sins, so I read Dante and then Milton's 'Paradise Lost.' That was a bit hard going.

I'm not just interested in fascinating faces or trees. I want to bore in deeper.

Painting to me is constant searching. I can see what I want, but I can't get there, and yet you have to be open enough that if it goes another way, then let it go that way.

Growing up in Chadds Ford, Pa., I shuttled between studio space in my parents' house and my grandfather's studio just up the hill. It was a solitary childhood, but I loved it.

I thought to live on an island was like living on a boat. Islands intrigue me. You can see the perimeters of your world. It's a microcosm.

I learned from a longtime farmer that pigs enjoy soothing music.

Art was a way of life in my family. My grandfather, N.C. Wyeth, who died a year before I was born, had been a prominent painter. So was my father, Andrew. My two aunts and two of my uncles also earned a living as painters.

Nothing is more uninteresting than completely knowing somebody, being totally at ease.

I view anything on this farm as model. I actually painted Union Rags as a yearling.

Oddly enough, my grandfather probably had more of an influence on me than my father.

My aunt Caroline was really a character. She lived and worked in my grandfather's old house and even wore some of his clothes.