Collection Landing page 3-2015

Jamie Wyeth

Date: 1986

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.163

Text Entries: The youngest child of artist Andrew Wyeth and the grandson of illustrator N.C. Wyeth, Jamie Wyeth showed an interest in art at an early age. Following the sixth grade, Wyeth was schooled at home by his own request and began a period of formal art training. He later studied with his father at the family's Pennsylvania farm and studio founded by his grandfather. By the age of twenty, Wyeth had his first solo exhibition and was soon known for his depictions of such celebrities as Andy Warhol and John F. Kennedy. Wyeth continually draws upon his surroundings for inspiration and his native Pennsylvania landscape has provided a powerful source of imagery. With his carefully controlled realist technique and tight, spare compositions, Wyeth transforms the ordinary into the monumental. Kalounna in Frogtown depicts the eleven-year-old Kalounna, a Laotian refugee who lived with his parents on Wyeth's farm. Wearing a tee-shirt from the popular television show Dallas with arms at his side, Kalounna fills the foreground of the painting. A figure that commands attention, he appears as an adolescent in transition, both vulnerable and confrontational.