The Shattered Goddess - Cover
- THE SHATTERED GODDESS - An acrylic painting on a 14 x 18 size poster board. It appears on the cover of the softcover book, "The Shattered Goddess," by Darrell Schweitzer, published by Donning Books.
My nephew Steven Brizek recently drove me to Chads Ford, Pennsylvania, to visit the art museums of N.C. Wyeth and his son Andrew Wyeth. Newell Converse Wyeth's paintings were exciting to look at, many were scenes he painted for classic adventure books, while others were early American historical scenes that appeared in magazines like "Scribners" and "Century" during the early 1900s. All of them were fine examples of the golden age of illustration, filled with life, action, and emotion
How odd then, that his son's paintings are so strikingly different from his father's paintings. Andrew is credited with being a superior painter compared to his father, but Andrew's work, though rendered masterfully, appeared static. My nephew, Steven used a kinder term, he described them as being "melancholy". Andrew Wyeth had the entire world including the American landscape from which he might have chosen wonderful scenes to paint, as well as painting portraits of famous people, past and present, to immortalize on canvas, but he limited himself to painting commonplace things in his own back yard. I glanced from N.C. Wyeth's painting of Lincoln giving his 2nd inaugural address, to Andrew's painting of an old, dented, rusty pail near a cobwebbed shed window, and wondered how this could be?
Andrew Wyeth also painted portraits of two visiting women that appear just as "melancholy" as his other paintings. He was of course, free to paint whatever he wanted, but it seems sad to me that his "vision" and "imagination" were so incredibly limited. Perhaps it was because he was born and raised in a country home, was educated at home, never went to a public school, that his "world" did not extend beyond the trees that surrounded his home.
As we drove home I felt grateful that I had the pleasure of looking at the works of two truly outstanding American artists.
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