JAMIE WYETH

There's a quality of life in Maine which is this singular and unique. I think. It's absolutely a world onto itself.

To me, this was an oxymoron, doing a painting of a dancer. Dancers are always moving.

I had been elected to the National Academy of Design in New York, and one of the requirements was that you give a portrait, a self-portrait of yourself.

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.

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'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.

From my earliest memories, my aunt was squirting out oil paint. I could just eat it. I would go from her studio and walk down to my father's house, and there he was, working in egg tempera.

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.

As a child, I always wanted to live on a boat.

Being a painter is the only profession where you have to stand there with all your shortcomings on the wall.

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

I have continued to paint; my father - who was savaged by the critics - continued to paint until practically the last week of his life.

I have copies of the books my grandfather illustrated for Scribner's in each house. I read those books all the time.

I have hundreds of art books and the biographies of artists I love, such as Thomas Eakins and Edgar Degas.

I just can't whip off a likeness of somebody.

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

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

I paint every day. I really have no hobbies. That's all I do.

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

I'm a terrible technician, and I have a very hard time painting.

I'm not just interested in fascinating faces or trees. I want to bore in deeper.

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

My father's work is rather mysterious, not much said, and my grandfather's is robust, bursting off the walls.

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

Oddly enough, my grandfather probably had more of an influence on me than my father.