Jamie Wyeth

“I began drawing when I was nearly 3, and after finishing the sixth grade, I left school to paint and was tutored at home. My father didn't think a formal education was necessary for a painter.”

“Growing up in Chadds Ford, Pa., I shuttled between studio space in my parents' house and my grandfather's studio just up the hill. It was a solitary childhood, but I loved it.”

“I thought to live on an island was like living on a boat. Islands intrigue me. You can see the perimeters of your world. It's a microcosm.”

“I view anything on this farm as model. I actually painted Union Rags as a yearling.”

“I'm a very strange painter. I don't wake up one day and say, 'God, isn't this a fantastic day, I'd better get out and paint!' I think my father's more that way, because he's very fast.”

“The whole consideration of - ... am I being compared as such and such's grandson and son - that was minuscule compared to the problems I was having just working... I didn't have time to start worrying about who I was in the eyes of the public.”

“My aunt Caroline was really a character. She lived and worked in my grandfather's old house and even wore some of his clothes.”

“Dance looks absurd on film, I think, like little puppets moving around.”

“Really, if you get to know pigs, they're very moody. They're not sweet little animals at all. That's what I like about them. They get depressed; they get into these snits. They're carnivorous.”

“With a creature, there's no voice, so the eyes become the voice. When you get eye-to-eye contact, a real connection, it's limitless - and incredibly thrilling.”

“We lived in my father's studio, so there were the brushes and the pencils and the paint. So it would - it was very natural for me to want to paint, I think, and it was never a question.”

“The things that I paint are things that I know very well.”

“I mostly paint animals I'm familiar with, but I did a series of paintings of ravens, so I read everything about them.”

“All my problems and anxieties certainly come out of my work, and that's the way it should be. Other than that, relationships with people I find very, very simple.”

“Nothing is more uninteresting than completely knowing somebody, being totally at ease.”

“Animals are not cute. They are disturbing. Pigs do eat their young. Actually, I hate pigs. I just happen to have some who are friends of mine.”

“I learned from a longtime farmer that pigs enjoy soothing music.”

“My father, whose work I adore... was down working on little things of grass and dead birds. Well, that didn't interest me. As an 8-year-old kid, I wanted knights in armor and so forth.”

“My father's like - it's as if he was transparent. He's a man of great mystery, whereas apparently N.C. Wyeth was 6-feet, 2-inches tall, with a booming voice. I think that's reflected in their work.”

“The great thing about a painter is that he or she lives on - I mean, Andrew Wyeth is more in his paintings than he was walking around.”