Wyeth's World

Andrew Wyeth - Detail of a Helga Portrait 

BBC documentaries sometimes have a way of disappearing from YouTube, so enjoy this while you can.  It's Michael Palin's beautiful, admiring documentary from 2015 on Andrew Wyeth, and the places and people that fascinated him in and around Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and coastal Maine.  There is even an interview with Helga Testorf, the immigrant home health care worker, and subject of a series of frank, intimate paintings done between 1972 and 1985 that Wyeth intended to keep secret until after his death (even from his family), whose premature discovery by the art world in the mid 1980s (Wyeth died in 2009) generated a storm of attention, speculation and controversy.  Helga's take: Wyeth's fascination with painting her unseen by the outside world was an effort to re-capture a purity in his painting, free from the expectations and input of patrons, the art world, his family, including his wife Betsy who remained from the earliest days of his career to the end a motivational and deeply involved partner in the business of his art.  This, I can see.

After watching the documentary, I was very moved by one of the comments on it.  Arthur Trauer wrote:

That was just fascinating and beautiful.  The paintings take my breath away and all the people were so interesting and supportive. 

My time is short now, I’ve always been sick and poor and there is so much I’ve missed.  Thanks for bringing all this into my small world.

I don't know if it's proper to quote someone's YouTube comment without permission, but it's rare to see a simple lovely thought so perfectly expressed.  I feel somewhat spoken for by Mr Trauer's comment.  Something about the tenor of these days makes me feel that about 99% of us have always been sick and poor and there is so much so many of us have missed.  And we're thirsty, and we deserve to drink.   May 2020 be the year we begin to be quenched.

Andrew Wyeth - The Witching Hour (1977)