Andrew Wyeth’s unique place-based practice was rigorously focused on just two narrowly circumscribed regions across a long and productive career: the immediate environs of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania for the fall and winter and mid-coast Maine in the spring and summer. Years were evenly divided between these landscapes, and through this devotion to a consistent subject matter grew a nuanced understanding of the distinct natural and human history that had shaped each place. By coming to know the layers in the land in this way, Wyeth developed a visionary practice in which observation and imagination intertwined.
Up East brings to Chadds Ford for the first time a broad overview of the key sites of Wyeth’s Maine work, including two temperas and 32 watercolors, many of which have never been exhibited before. Muscongus Bay and the coves of its Saint George River in particular offered the artist an evocative environment of granite, weathered pines, and salt air, and the stories of the people who had co-existed with these surroundings for millenia. Wyeth responded to the ancient shell middens that made evident the longstanding and continuing Abenaki presence in the landscape, and re-imagined the early European encounters with this land. He painted the structures and vessels that are characteristic of the area, both imbued with the spirit of the people of the place, who became his friends and models.
All the works in this exhibition are by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) and are drawn from the collection of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, the support of which has made this exhibition possible.