Rather.

Wyeth, Jamie, Patriot's Barn, 2001

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family, and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.

Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to Alexander Donald, Paris, February 7, 1788

Unflinching.

Jamie Wyeth: The Unflinching Eye ...

Work.

Jamie Wyeth at work on Inferno ...

This is where the internet shines the brightest.

Least.

Wyeth, Jamie, Jenny Whibley Sings, 2008

It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the night and gradually reacquire colors, but seem to cross meanwhile an uncertain limbo, faintly touched, just breathed on by light; the hour in which one is least certain of the world's existence.

Italo Calvino

Whip.

Wyeth, Jamie, The Weathervane, 1959

WEATHERCOCK

Good morning, weathercock,

How'd you fare last night?

Did the cold wind bite you,

Did you face up to the fright

When the leaves spin from October

And whip around your tail?

Did you shake from the blast,

Did you shiver through the gale?

Give us direction; the best of goodwill,

Put us in touch with fair winds.

Sing to us softly, hum evening's song.

Tell us what the blacksmith has done for you.

Do you simply reflect changes

In the patterns of the sky,

Or is it true to say the weather heeds

The twinkle in your eye?

Do you fight the rush of winter;

Do you hold snowflakes at bay?

Do you lift the dawn sun from the fields

And help him on his way?

Good morning Weathercock: make this day bright.

Put us in touch with your fair winds.

Sing to us softly, hum evening's song.

Point the way to better days we can share with you.

Jethro Tull, from Heavy Horses

Wind.

Wyeth, Jamie, Pine Study, 1960

this ink painting of wind

blowing through pines

who hears it?

Ikkyu

Acceptance.

Wyeth, Jamie, Islanders, 1990

A THANKSGIVING to GOD for HIS HOUSE

Lord, Thou hast given me a cell

Wherein to dwell,

A little house, whose humble roof

Is weather-proof:

Under the spars of which I lie

Both soft, and dry;

Where Thou my chamber for to ward

Hast set a guard

Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep

Me, while I sleep.

Low is my porch, as is my fate,

Both void of state;

And yet the threshold of my door

Is worn by th’ poor,

Who thither come and freely get

Good words, or meat.

Like as my parlour, so my hall

And kitchen’s small;

A little buttery, and therein

A little bin,

Which keeps my little loaf of bread

Unchipp’d, unflead;

Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar

Make me a fire,

Close by whose living coal I sit,

And glow like it.

Lord, I confess too, when I dine,

The pulse is Thine,

And all those other bits, that be

There plac’d by Thee;

The worts, the purslain, and the mess

Of water-cress,

Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent;

And my content

Makes those, and my beloved beet,

To be more sweet.

‘Tis Thou that crown’st my glittering hearth

With guiltless mirth;

And giv’st me wassail-bowls to drink,

Spic’d to the brink.

Lord, ’tis Thy plenty-dropping hand

That soils my land;

And giv’st me, for my bushel sown,

Twice ten for one;

Thou mak’st my teeming hen to lay

Her egg each day;

Besides my healthful ewes to bear

Me twins each year;

The while the conduits of my kine

Run cream, for wine.

All these, and better, Thou dost send

Me, to this end,

That I should render, for my part,

A thankful heart,

Which, fir’d with incense, I resign,

As wholly Thine;

But the acceptance, that must be,

My Christ, by Thee.

Robert Herrick

Wandering.

Wyeth, Jamie, Offshore Goose, 1994

Musing takes place in a kind of meadowlands of the imagination, a part of the imagination that has not yet been plowed, developed, or put to any immediately practical use.  Time spent there is not work time, yet without that time the mind becomes sterile, dull, domesticated. The fight for free space — for wilderness and public space — must be accompanied by a fight for free time to spend wandering in that space.

Rebecca Solnit, from Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Sparks.

What sparks an artist’s imagination?  How do artists return to themes and interests over time?  How does their technique and approach to painting, drawing, and combined media evolve during their career?

Jamie Wyeth, in conversation with Elliot Bostwick Davis, discusses some of the MFA artists, including John Singleton Copley, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Rockwell Kent, Edward Hopper, and Andy Warhol, as well as works by members of his family, that have inspired his work and practice as one of the foremost contemporary realists ...

Victoria Woodhall of the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine as she interviews artist Jamie Wyeth about his process and famous family (including his grandfather, legendary illustrator N.C. Wyeth and his father, painter Andrew Wyeth). Jamie discusses artists of the Brandywine School tradition, growing up in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and the stories behind his well-known works ...

Hide.

Wyeth (Jamie), Pumpkinhead (Self-portrait), 1972

Jack-o'-Lantern, Jack-o'-Lantern,

Tell me where you hide by day?

In the cradle where the vapours

Dream the sunlit hours away.

Jack-o'-Lantern, Jack-o'-Lantern,

Who rekindles you at night?

Any firefly in the meadow

Lends a Jack-o'-Lantern light.

John B. Tabb

Lean.

Wyeth, Jamie, Pumpkin and Shell, 1989

SEPTEMBER MIDNIGHT

Lyric night of the lingering Indian summer,

Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,

Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,

Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,

The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence

Under a moon waning and worn, broken,

Tired with summer.

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,

Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,

Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,

Snow-hushed and heavy.

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,

While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,

As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,

Lest they forget them.

Sara Teasdale

Education.

Wyeth, Jamie, Island Roses, 2004

We cannot create observers by saying 'observe', but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses. 

Maria Montessori

Thank you, Casey.

There.

Wyeth, Jamie, Sea Watchers (study), 2009

DISCONTINUOUS POEMS

The frightful reality of things
Is my everyday discovery.
Each thing is what it is.
How can I explain to anyone how much
I rejoice over this, and find it enough?

To be whole, it is enough to exist.

I have written quite a number of poems
And may write many more, of course.
Each poem of mine explains it,
Though all my poems are different,
Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it.

Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone,
I don't begin thinking whether it feels.
I don't force myself to call it my sister,

But I enjoy it because of its being a stone,
I enjoy it because it feels nothing,
I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me.

At times I also hear the wind blow by
And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes
          it worth having been born.

I don't know what others will think who read this;
But I find it must be good because I think it
         without effort,
And without the idea of others hearing me think,
Because I think it without thoughts,
Because I say it as my words say it.

Once they called me a materialist poet
And I admired myself because I never thought
That I might be called by any name at all.
I am not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any value, it is not I who am
        valuable.
The value is there, in my verses.
All this has nothing whatever to do with any will
       of mine.

Fernando Passoa

Liquidated.

Wyeth (Jamie), The Raven, 1980

Some witches are said to kill people with graveyard dirt, which is dust scraped from a grave with the left forefinger at midnight. This is mixed with the blood of a black bird; a raven or crow is best, but a black chicken will do in a pinch. The witch ties this mixture up in a rag which has touched a corpse and buries it under the doorstep of the person who is to be liquidated.

Vance Randolph, from Ozark Magic and Folklore

Pumkinhead.

Wyeth, Pumpkinhead, 1972

Inhaled.

Wyeth, Pumpkin Hill, 1977

At no other time than autumn does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Still.

Wyeth, Jamie, Dog, 1983

DREAMING WINTER

Don't ask me if these knives are real.

I could paint a king or show a map

the way home—to go like this:

Wobble me back to a tiger's dream

a dream of knives and bones too common

to be exposed. My secrets are ignored.

Here comes the man I love. His coat is wet

and his face is falling like the leaves,

tobacco stains on his Polish teeth.

I could tell jokes about him—one up

for the man who brags a lot, laughs

a little and hangs his name on the nearest knob.

Don't ask me. I know it's only hunger.

I saw that king—the one my sister knew

but was allergic to. Her face ran until

his eyes became the white of several winters.

Snow on his bed told him that the silky tears

were uniformly mad and all the money in the world

couldn't bring him to a tragic end. Shame

or fortune tricked me to his table, shattered

my one standing lie with new kinds of fame.

Have mercy on me, Lord. Really. If I should die

before I wake, take me to that place I just heard

banging in my ears. Don't ask me. Let me join

the other kings, the ones who trade their knives

for a sack of keys. Let me open any door,

stand winter still and drown in a common dream.

James Welch

Early.

Wyeth, Jamie, Rolling Pumpkin, 1989

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare.But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September's a billion years away.

But you take October, now. School's been on a month and you're riding easier in the reins, jogging along.You got time to think of the garbage you'll dump on old man Prickett's porch, or the hairy-ape costume you'll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month.And if it's around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash grey at twilight, it seems Hallowe'en will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.

But one strange wild dark long year, Hallowe'en came early.

One year Hallowe'en came on October 24, three hours after midnight.

Ray Bradbury, from Something Wicked This Way Comes

Remember.

Wyeth, Jamie, Steps, 1971

But I remember more dearly autumn afternoons in bottoms that lay intensely silent under old great trees.

C.S. Lewis, from Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

Looks.

Wyeth, Jamie, Pumpkinscape, 1980

To AUTUMN

The thistledown's flying, though the winds are all still,

On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,

The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;

Through stones past the counting it bubbles red-hot.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,

The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.

The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,

And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

Hill-tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,

And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;

Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;

Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

John Clare