
Andrew Wyeth died this week. One of my favorite American artists, Wyeth's realism in his painting style, the matte finish of the tempura paints and the precision of his watercolors take second seat to the somber, cold and lonely feeling of his subjects and compositions. Time magazine's
article in noting his death emphasizes that Wyeth's elusive canvasses stay with us.
That elusive emptiness is what I played in an iteration of yearning. The lonely rural life created by our mono crop agribusiness industry was my remix theme, left, taking Wyeth's Christina (who actually was his wife) leaning towards a lonely abandoned farm house I found in the Texas panhandle completely surrounded by plowed earth, and nothing else but plowed earth. Christina's World reinterpreted, if you will, on the Plains in our modern landscapes of rural desolation.

Wyeth's Christina's World, below right, hangs in a small foyer entry to the great American paintings in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (I think it is great that the MOMA allows photography. I wish more museums would). Another review of Wyeth's legacy noted that the MOMA, by hanging Wyeth's Christina's World in the foyer rather than in with the rest of the famous 20th century paintings in the adjacent gallery, was a statement that Wyeth's paintings don't stand with other art and, like Christina's longing to be in that other place, his art just "isn't there" according to critics.
New Mexico can claim a Wyeth heritage. Henriette Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth's daughter, became an artist and married artist
Peter Hurd. Both lived in New Mexico until their deaths.