‘Unsettled’ art showcases Jamie Wyeth at Brandywine Museum (2024)

CHADDS FORD — Visitors have the chance to view Jamie Wyeth: Unsettled while during its final days of local exhibition, now through Monday, at the Brandywine Museum of Art.

“Sometimes the hidden is more effective,” world-renowned artist Jamie Wyeth told the Daily Local News during a press tour of the exhibit earlier this year.

The Unsettled exhibit features more than 50 works that trace a persistent vein of intriguing and often disconcerting imagery over the career of artist Jamie Wyeth, revealing fascinating insight into this artist and the art of visual storytelling, said Nicole Kindbeiter, marketing director for the Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art.

Wyeth, a third-generation artist, is the son of legendary American realist painter Andrew Wyeth and the grandson of N.C. Wyeth, the famous illustrator.

When asked to share his advice for young artists in 2024, Wyeth said: “What you do is work at it.” For instance, he paints between four and six hours every day.

“It couldn’t be a better time for artists right now,” Wyeth said. “It’s wide open. Things are popping all over the place in various forms of art.”

As for the Unsettled exhibit featuring so many big pieces of his artwork on display, Wyeth said, “It’s almost overwhelming.”

“Across the decades, Wyeth has honed his attention onto unnerving phenomena, zeroed in on uncanny experiences, and delved into a world of unsettling imagery,” said Amanda Burdan, senior curator at Brandywine and curator of the Unsettled exhibition.

“With consummate skill, marshaling a wide range of disconcerting elements — subjects, compositional approaches and techniques — within his works, Wyeth has developed skillful, cinematic evocations that can induce anxiety in the viewer,” Burdan said.

“One of the unique things about this exhibition is how much the works in the show rely upon the visitors for their meanings,” Burden said.

She continued: “There are very few clear explanations from Jamie Wyeth about what an image ‘means,’ so we are left to think for ourselves and imagine a narrative. It’s interestingly very different from the work of an illustrator, like N.C. Wyeth, whose paintings so closely related to a very specific text. The works in this exhibition are as unsettling as you make them for yourself.”

Wyeth is the son of artist Andrew Wyeth. He is the grandson of N.C. Wyeth.

“Jamie Wyeth is a renowned American painter who has created his own legacy and redefined what it means to be a Wyeth. This exhibition takes a fresh look at the artist’s oeuvre and with remarkable nuance plumbs a rich vein of the uncanny throughout Wyeth’s six-decade career,” said Thomas Padon, the James H. Duff director of the Brandywine Museum of Art.

“As the title suggests, Unsettled focuses on a single through line in Wyeth’s work—one in which ominous stillness, post-apocalyptic skies, frightening shifts in scale, and strange vantage points seem to highlight the vulnerability of the human condition,” Padon said. “With his startling compositions and a masterful use of media, color and texture, Wyeth creates an immersive, synesthetic experience that both engages and upsets visual and emotional equilibrium.”

The Brandywine Museum of Art is at 1 Hoffman’s Mill Road, off Route 1, on a picturesque property that spans both Chester and Delaware counties. The Brandywine Creek runs through the forested landscape and the campus is also home to the Brandywine Conservancy, the sister branch of the institution.

The Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art preserves and promotes the natural and cultural connections between the area’s beautiful landscape, historic sites, and important artists, as previously reported. The conservancy protects the lands and waters throughout the Brandywine Valley and other priority conservation areas, developing sustainable approaches to emerging needs and assuring preservation of majestic open spaces and protection of natural resources for generations to come.

The museum is open now through Monday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. It is closed once a week on Tuesdays.

After Monday, the Unsettled exhibit next travels to Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, followed by exhibitions that flow into 2024 at Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina, Dayton Art Institute in Ohio and Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Washington.