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Family and Friends: Wyatt LeGrand

Art exhibition shown at the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette from March 18 - May 8

Anna Johnson

Written Review and Audio Tour

05/05/2022
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Table of Contents
Exhibition Summary 2

Appendix A: Artist Bio 4

Appendix B: Exhibit Artist Statement 5
Appendix C: Interview Transcript 7

Exhibition Summary
The Art Museum of Greater Lafayette (AMGL) specializes in showcasing local artists and Wyatt
LeGrand’s art is a wonderful example of that practice. LeGrand grew up in Indiana and is
currently a high school art teacher in Bloomington. The work in his exhibit, Family and Friends,
is made of portraits focusing on a small group of people in his inner circle, ranging from
students, to grandparents and family friends. The exhibit is located in the Shook Gallery on the
first floor of the AMGL. It is a small square room that only takes 5 minutes to walk around when
looking at the art on a surface level. The intimate size of the room only helps to highlight the
many people illustrated in LeGrand’s work.

LeGrand uses a realistic, but also somewhat abstract painting style that encourages viewers to
look at his work both close up and at a distance. Some people think portraits should be
hyper-realistic to be recognizable, but LeGrand believes that removing detail in portraits can
actually increase the likeness as well as add visual interest. He wants to capture the feeling of the
person without drowning them out in unnecessary detail. Many of his paintings are done in an
almost impressionistic style with splashes of bright color, giving the exhibit a feeling of
playfulness. LeGrand does not like referring to his work as art. In fact he does not like any
terminology that puts himself at the forefront. Instead he focuses on the people he is painting and
the emotional reaction he wants to convey, without any of the lofty goals he attributes to fine art.

LeGrand is a natural born storyteller. He loves the opportunity to talk about the people in his
work who have shaped who he is. When I began my research I did not plan to interview him, but
after walking through the exhibit I felt that I was missing something. Although the exhibit is
beautifully painted I knew non-artists could not fully appreciate the exhibit until they knew the
stories behind the portraits. Most of the painting’s titles use the subject's names, which do not
hold much meaning on their own. I want to give the audience a chance to get to know the people
LeGrand paints and why they are important.

For a more detailed summary of LeGrand’s background and his thought process please turn to
his artist biography and the exhibit statement that were provided by the AMGL. They can be
read in Appendices A and B. The audio/video tour of the exhibit lead by Anna Johnson is a
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condensed version of the interview with LeGrand. To hear about the exhibit in his own words
read through the interview transcript found in Appendix C. Please enjoy learning the story
behind Wyatt LeGrand’s work.
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Appendix A : Artist Bio

Provided by Art Museum of Greater Lafayette

While growing up in a small, scenic town of Bloomfield, Indiana, Wyatt soon became
acknowledged by the community for his skills as an artist. He currently works from his
hometown studio and teaches art to grades 6-12 at Bloomfield Jr/Sr High School.

Wyatt created his very first painting as a college student in 2008. Shortly thereafter, Wyatt
discovered plein air painting, had his first solo show, and found good luck participating in
several juried exhibitions. In 2009, Wyatt returned to his hometown and opened LeGrand Art
Studio and Gallery. Since his homecoming, Wyatt has dedicated himself to creating artwork in
the place he grew up, sharing experiences with his students and members of the community. In
addition to teaching and working from his Bloomfield studio, LeGrand regularly travels to paint
on location, including annual plein air excursions to the western states. LeGrand’s work has been
regularly exhibited across the country, recognized by the Oil Painters of America, American
Impressionist Society, and in 2016, acknowledged by Southwest Art Magazine in their annual
“21 under 31” feature.

“I say let things be spontaneous…paint what interests you, paint what confuses you, paint
anything you wish as long as you paint more quickly than slowly, as the moment won’t last
forever.” ~ Wyatt LeGrand
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Appendix B: Exhibit Artist Statement

Written by Wyatt LeGrand

“It takes a big dog to weigh a ton,” he said. I nodded in agreement, but I didn’t know what he
meant. Then, my grandfather pointed at me with an open bag of Fritos he’d been warming in his
lap while napping in his favorite chair. “Would you like a corn chip?” my ‘Papu’ asked with a
smirk…"They’ll make your hair curly.” I would always help myself to a handful for the sake of
the ritual…it wasn’t the first time I’d been offered a stale chip from his end table stash of recliner
snacks. And I’ll be damned if my hair isn’t curly to this day.

For as long as I knew him, my grandfather said ridiculous things that rarely made much sense in
the moment. And my grandmother, ‘Nana,’ would tell me, “Your grandfather isn’t thinking
right.” She’d follow that up with a long sigh and a reassuring smile that only a kindergarten
teacher could muster. She had a certain sadness about her, but it was most always negated by a
contradictory and unwavering kindness she shared with every person she met. I knew it was in
there, though…the sadness…underneath a shield of stubborn selflessness. There were no
half-hearted back pats for Nana. She had no use for patronizing appeals from people who
couldn’t really relate…no need for sympathy sans empathy. She was Mrs. Heaton, the lifelong
kindergarten teacher. She was the reassuring smile you needed more than she did. She was the
sweetest lady a person could inherit a sadness from.

And I wish I could smile like my Nana. But instead, to disguise myself in moments of doubt and
turmoil, I channel my Papu. I snarl a bit, as he did. Papu snarled ‘til the day he died, a year after
my grandmother. And in a cruel, ironic twist, my grandmother died trying to keep Papu alive.
She doesn’t have a birthdate carved on her gravestone, but the two mink coats my grandfather
bought her are stowed away in our guest bedroom closet. It’s a highway house we live in, my
wife and I, just as it had been when Nana and Papu lived here.

Along with the minks, my grandmother kept every godawful construction paper valentine she
ever received. And every glitter-dipped pine cone ornament and every graduation invitation.
She could recall forty years of class roster roll calls when a familiar face greeted her at the post
office, all while finishing impromptu handwritten letters to old friends who’d never write back.
Hell, she even used more postage than necessary to better decorate each envelope for its
recipient. I remember wishing she’d write me a letter like that, with four stamps and extra curly
cursive. She probably did and I’ve likely forgotten…shame on me and God bless my grandma.

I share little stories from time to time with my own students. They seem to enjoy my ramblings
but they might only be humoring me…they’re sweet like that and I enjoy a captive audience.
Today, in an attempt to better tell an old story to a group of underclassmen, I decided to share
some of my latest paintings—some portraits I’ve been working on for an upcoming exhibit. The
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kids are critical, of course, as they know I expect them to be, and brutally honest in the most
helpful ways. Their critiques aren’t contaminated by the pretentious jargon that typical fine art
discussions are hinged on. They say the first thing that pops in their heads, thank God, and
rarely does it have to do with composition or color theory. They only know how to ponder the
most important questions. So when I shared a painting of my Papu, they asked “Is that your
grandpa?” When I shared a painting of my grandmother, they said “I know her! Who is she?”

And when I shared with the class a painting of my wife, Brittany, and our dog, Gibson, I cried.
Gibson has been gone for a couple years now. I couldn’t help but weep. I attempted to laugh the
tears away but had trouble. I tried to find a smile to ease the nervousness I’d created. But
instead I snarled…and choked on an apology while the class sat in silence. I was
mortified…defeated. And then a voice from the back of the classroom whispered, “It’s okay.”

It’s nearly midnight now. I’m staring at a new face staring back at me from my Papu’s favorite
chair, in the sunken living room of a highway house. He’s a rescue we named Murphy. It takes a
big dog.

Wyatt LeGrand

3/16/2022
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Appendix C: Interview Transcript

I interviewed Wyatt on April 24th over Zoom. The meeting in its entirety was 45 minutes long.
The following includes a brief discussion of his process, followed by him telling the story behind
each painting in the exhibit.

Anna: Do you usually paint from life? Is it from memory, photo or life?

Wyatt: Well, I mean, you know, painting from life, I tried to do that as much as I can.
I do a lot of landscapes, so the plein air painting thing, the tradition of going out and painting
outside, I do a lot of that. So that's a big part of my life. And it's kind of a transfer, like a lot of
that approach, I think transfers over to my studio painting that I do from references. So I use
photography a lot. But I kind of use it in a particular way that makes the photograph unimportant
after a certain amount of time. So you said the paint from memory or whatever, that's something
I've been playing around with a lot, trying my best to paint as little from the reference as
possible, like there's a certain amount of reference, the person needs to obligate themselves to the
representation of whatever it is, but then once you've achieved that, then it's like, okay, what can
I do, just because I know it. And so that's become a, I guess an important part of my painting is
getting away as much as possible from relying on photography, even though I use photography a
lot in my process, I would say.

Anna: What do you enjoy the most about painting people, especially people who are close to
you?

Wyatt: Well, I've always been drawn to figurative artwork, just because I think there's a
sentimentality to a picture of a person's face. Even if you don't know who the person is it's very
resonant for me. So for whatever reason I have a more emotional reaction to a painting of a
person or a portrait or something than I would from a picture of a tree. And because I paint,
typically representationally, It’ll be in like an abstract fashion. I think that most painters would
probably say that trying to get an emotional response from the viewer is probably a goal of some
type. And I think, for me, the most emotional response comes out of the picture of a person. So
maybe selfishly, I’m just painting to get myself all worked up and emotional about whatever I'm
painting rather than necessarily worrying about what everybody else sees. But I think there's still
something that people pick up on. And I don't know what it is, I guess it's that kind of a special
thing that people like to call art. Whenever you look at a sentimental portrait, or something that
the artist obviously had some sort of connection to, and then other people feel that I think there's
something special there. I can try to describe it, but I just kind of sound like a dummy
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Interview Part 2: Wyatt’s Stories Behind His Art

In the second part of the interview LeGrand goes through each painting individually in the order
they appear in the audio/video tour.

Seasons Greetings, 2019

Wyatt: Well, you know, all the paintings for the show are paintings of my family and friends.
The irony of it is I don't have much of either. My wife has a good sized family, but I don't really
have much of a family at all. And in terms of friend, I have a lot of people that I know that I'm
very friendly with. But I keep to myself quite a bit. So I guess, as I started painting these
pictures, these people that kept on coming up in the figurative paintings, I was like, oh, it's really
kind of cool. At least to my eye, they feel a lot heavier. If for no other reason, simply because I
don't have 100 different models that I'm painting. I'll paint all sorts of different people. But I'm
choosing consciously to paint these people that I know really well. And I'm choosing consciously
to paint these people that I know from memory as much as possible. So there's this whole
connection to the subject that I hope reads with all the pictures, but you're right about this one
Season's Greetings. It's kind of a funny story, but the lady who was in charge of the exhibit, She
was getting everything prepared for it in the weeks going up to it. And as a rule, I kind of
procrastinate a little bit on purpose, so that I'm finishing paintings the week of the exhibit
usually. And it's never on accident, it's just the way I prefer to do things. And she was asking for
a photograph of me to put with my bio and statement, and all that other junk on the wall, that I'm
not always a huge fan of. I was very insistent upon not including a photograph. So this was a
kind of middle ground, I think. So I thought I could include a self portrait of me so long as
somebody else was in the portrait. So that's a picture of my wife. And every year, she likes to
send greetings cards during the holidays, and she asked me to send a greeting card, and I ended
up throwing a big fit about it because I don't want to do it. Because she would suggest using a
painting and then I’d be like, I don't use those paintings. I would make a big to do about it. And I
remember this year in particular, or whenever this was painted, I was kind of grumpy about the
whole situation. So I painted those two pictures. And I thought it was funny because people are
getting grumpy greeting cards from my wife and I. So that's kind of the backstory on that one.
But I paint a lot of self portraits and I paint my wife a lot, and neither of us were featured. My
wife is in the show a couple of times, but I'm only in there this one time. So this is kind of a way
to keep that tradition going without going too heavy handed with that card I played off.

Larry, 2022
Wyatt: Well, Larry is a really important person to me. He passed away a few years ago, and he
was definitely my best friend. And he was in a lot of respects, kind of like a father figure to me.
Maybe more fatherly to me than any other person has ever been. This is kind of a depiction of
Larry, the way that I knew him pretty well, early in the morning. He and I traveled a lot painting
and we went across the country a few times. Just kind of going wherever and painting and living
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out of a sprinter van. And so this is the way he looked in the mornings. Sometimes he'd wake up
quite a bit before me and I opened the door to the sprinter and he’d just be standing there
drinking a cup of coffee out of these really horrible tin mugs that we drink everything out of, we
drink our coffee or water, or our booze, it all came out of those little tin cups. And so it's kind of
an homage to him, in a way that I thought was maybe most appropriate without being too on the
nose.
Anna: Was he an artist too? Or did you just travel together?
Wyatt: Yeah, he was an artist. And I mean it whenever I say he was an artist, he really was an art
guy and very well respected. Known for the plein air painting sort of thing. He traveled all over
the place and exhibited everywhere. He was in all these different shows. He was a wild man. To
give you a brief summary of his story, he was a commercial artist and when he was in Las Vegas
he had a heart attack at a casino and he died as they brought him back to life. Then he decided to
hell with everything. I'm just gonna paint pictures. And then he became arguably one of the best
plein air painters, or painters just overall in the state of Indiana. I know that the museum in
Lafayette actually has at least one painting of his in their permanent collection.

George and Avenelle Heaton, 2021

Wyatt: Here’s my grandparents. My grandparents passed away several years ago. But I've
painted them many times. And this is probably the best version of this painting that I've done.
And basically all of these paintings have the same sort of scenario. It's representing an actual
moment, where my grandfather, who had always been kind of this eccentric, hardened man, he
was taken to the hospital one night because he was just kind of having this psychological episode
of some type. They took them to what they used to call the psych ward in the hospital. I don't
know what they call it actually now, but they took them to that floor. And my grandmother had to
go. My grandmother was the exact opposite of my grandfather. She's like the sweetest lady ever.
She was a kindergarten teacher, and everybody knew her as a kindergarten teacher. So there's this
weird dynamic between the two of them, and she always took care of him. So this is kind of my
best representation of that moment, because it kind of a catalyst for a lot of other things that
happen shortly thereafter. The composition took me a while to figure out, but I decided that
showing them this way was the best way to tell the story. The space in between was probably the
most important part of the picture.

One Another, 2020

Wyatt: This is my wife, Brittany and our dog Gibson. He passed away a few years ago, and he
was a big part of our lives. He lived to be about 14 years old. Basically, my wife got Gibson
whenever she and I first started seeing one another so he was like this fixture in our lives for as
long as we knew one another. So this is a painting of a regular evening with him in his older
years. And my wife looking on with what I would probably say is a little concern.
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Brothers, 2022
Wyatt: Okay, we're getting a lot more lighthearted.There's several paintings in the show of
Sammy, Silas and Sydney. These are three people that I asked to come and model a little bit for
me. They're all friends of mine. Their family is a good friend of my wife and I had Sydney and
Sammy in class, since I teach high school. Sammy went to IU and has since graduated, and I see
him probably once a week now. Sidney is actually at Purdue, studying. I got to know the family
really well and I thought that including them in the show was a good representation of a lot of
my students that I've had in class. So even though I care for them a lot, they're also standing
symbols for all the students that I’ve had that graduated and I've since become really good
friends with. I think an interesting thing I did not consider whenever I started teaching is that my
better friends ended up being the ones that I had in class. These two are brothers and so that’s
what it's called.

William, 2022
This is my father in law, Brittany’s dad. He's a farmer, has a bee farm, and spends a lot of time
and effort taking care of the farm. It's one of those things that I know he takes a lot of pride in
and I wanted to paint him doing the everyday menial sort of jobs that he does. There's two
paintings of William in the show and I chose those two paintings because I think they best
represent the way he looks without actually being overly specific about it, like facial details and
things like that. He has a certain type of posture and gesture that you can spot him from a mile
away, so that's what I was focusing in on each of these pictures.

Sydney, 2022
Here's a picture of Sydney. Sydney is a very talented and smart girl with a lot of big thoughts, I
think. And so whenever I painted her I tried to paint her in a way that, I don’t know if regal is the
right word, but I tried to bestow upon her a look of wisdom for her age, because I think she has
it. That was kind of the reason why I liked this painting so much.

Ghosts, 2022
Wyatt: This Is my grandmother again. Like I said, she was a school teacher. She always wore
the coolest outfits. The one that she's wearing in this, I remember she wore this sweater for her
entire life. It's like a sweater vest she would wear that had these dumb ghosts and Halloween
things on it. So this was from a memory I had of her around the end of October, and every once
in a while she would get a little lax and let her guard show a little bit. I think that she was often
overly concerned with taking care of my grandfather and it weighed very heavily on her. So this
is not a typical way you would see my grandmother. You would typically see her with this very
pleasant kindergarten teacher sort of smile. So this was kind of a little twist of irony I guess.
Something special for me because I think I was probably one of the few people that ever saw that
side of her. My grandmother had all these great pieces of clothing that always looked very classy.
Not saying that’s a rare thing, but you know, I live in a very rural community and people don't
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typically dress like that. People commented on that all the time. And I thought it was kind of
cool, because I look kind of like a Sasquatch, and it's cool that my grandmother was into fashion
to some degree. It's just kind of another ironic little thing.

Spring, 2019
Wyatt: This painting is of a couple of my other former students, Nick and Megan. I liked this
painting a lot because it happened kind of spur the moment. I asked them to pose for some
paintings and in my mind I wanted to create an interesting background for them. I didn't really
know what at the moment, so I kind of sketched out a composition just with shapes. Then they
start talking to me, and they say, well we're gonna go on this trip to Colorado, and since I've
traveled out west they were asking for advice and stuff, so I'm telling them where to go. They're
sending me messages from these mountain passes that I told them to go see and it was really
really sweet. So I got to paint them in this top of the Rockies sort of look. I've talked with them
for a little while, but to my knowledge, they're still together. They met in one of my art classes
and they've been inseparable since. I don't take credit for that part of it. But it's kind of cool to
see that over the course of several years now. I really liked the western landscape, just because
it's so dramatic and so different from what it is here. I've been known to paint a lot of Western
scenes, and working Nick and Megan into a scene like this was kind of fun, something different.

Nick, 2022
Wyatt: Nick is a really funny guy. Whenever he was in high school he and I butted heads a little
bit, because I think both he and I are used to getting a lot of attention in a room. I'm the one that
gets all the attention in the room whenever I'm the teacher, and sometimes he had a conflict
there. But it's funny because as he's gotten older he's become so sweet. He's so funny and he's
still kind of goofy and a class clown, if you will. He used to do stand up comedy. He was going
to Bloomington to this nightclub and doing stand up comedy as a high school student, which
might be one of the bravest things a high school student could do. Just putting himself out there
like that. So I think this sort of picture has a playfulness to it. I chose to cover him up, because
for some reason I thought that made for a more interesting read. It said more about his character
and I can't really put my finger on it with words, so I guess I'll just leave it there.

Basye, 2019
Wyatt: Basie was another student of mine. I did a project a few years ago, well it's actually still
ongoing because the pandemic messed everything up. I painted 100 people in my living room.
They just came to my house and I painted them. They sat for maybe two hours or so, and I did
portraits of all of them. I painted Basye because her mom insisted on bringing her over. Then
after I did her portrait and took some other photos of her. I used a lot of references to paint a
picture. This is the kind of picture that I painted of a lot of younger people. So I think it was fun
to include into the show because it shows a kind of youth. There's an age where kids in my class
will do anything to get out of having a conversation with me. It's just this awkward teenage thing
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where it's hard to talk to adults, but they want to be adults at the same time. I felt that way with
her in this picture.

Sammy, Silas, Sydney, 2022

Wyatt: I wanted to paint this in a way that was like the cover to a western movie or movie
poster. Their family goes on a lot of trips and they go out west a lot. It seems like we've traded a
lot of information about Western adventures. I see all three of those kids as being the
adventurous type and not afraid to head out on their own. It’s funny because Silas legitimately
was wearing the weird poncho thing and the cowboy hat because he just wears that stuff all the
time. I have some other paintings of him where I've edited his clothing to make him look like a
cowboy. That was kind of my idea. But here it just makes more sense. It's more telling to have
him the way that he really was dressed with a pair of jogger pants with a nylon jacket over the
top. But the funny thing is he made a request. He owned a pair of sneakers, but the sneakers he
really wanted were a pair of Air Jordans. Ones in black and red. He knows that I'm a big
basketball fan so I know exactly what he's talking about. So the sneakers that I painted on him
are the ones that he wanted, which don't match with the cowboy attire, but that's what he wanted.
I remember, when they were modeling for this there was a lot of mud and Sydney couldn't wear
her shoes. She's very big into shoes, and she's wearing a pair of Air Force ones. She couldn't
actually have those on when I was taking my references because she would ruin them. But I did a
lot of little edits in this that are kind of fun. I really did this painting mostly just so that Sammy
Silas and Sydney look at it and enjoy it.

Elizabeth, 2022
Wyatt: This is one of two paintings in the show of daughters of a friend of mine. I have a friend
who is an art teacher as well. She just became an art teacher a couple of years ago. She student
taught under me during one of my semesters, and she student taught with four daughters. It's just
a seemingly impossible thing. I don't know how she does it, it's a lot to manage. I wanted to do a
painting of her. I have students who actually started planning for a painting of her, but at this
point in time I hadn't really figured out how to depict our relationship. So I thought the best way
to do it was to depict her daughters. I could depict her character through her kids because her
kids look like her in a lot of ways and she's very wrapped up in them. And so I thought that this
was the best way to include her in the show, even though it's not directly.

Tread, 2020
Wyatt: This is my wife Brittany. We have a swimming pool. Our swimming pool is this
inground pool next to our house, and our house was my grandparents house. So I bought their
house and I got the pool. The pool is kind of special because it was one of the first round pools
installed in this area. It's a huge thing and it’s a whole bunch of upkeep because it's old with
painted concrete, but it's very nice. People come over all the time, and my wife loves to swim in
the pool. The pool has become a big part of my life, because I swam in it as a child and now I
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own the swimming pool, and now people are coming over. I'm treating them the way that my
grandparents treated visitors that wanted to come over and swim and it's all kind of
interconnected. As a side note, my grandfather, the ass that he was, was always really interested
in wooing my grandmother. He waited until she went on like a sorority trip with some girlfriends
of hers where she was gone for three days. He caught up all of his buddies in town who all
worked at the various companies that you would need to call if you wanted to have a pool put in,
and he had a nine foot deep concrete swimming pool built in three days so that when my
grandmother came back there as a surprise for her.

Vessel, 2019
Wyatt: This is Megan again. She's holding this reflective vase that I actually use sometimes
when I have people modeling because it reflects light back up on their face. It's kind of like, like
a photographer using one of those big screens to bounce light around, except it can become like
an interesting object that does unpredictable things. So we were outside and I had her holding
that so I could get better light on her face and I thought the whole thing looked very interesting.
To me it's a vessel, and she was my student, and there's some symbolism there. Maybe if you
look really close in the reflection of the vessel there is just barely the silhouette. That's actually
me standing in front painting her.

GB, 2022
Wyatt: This is my grandfather. GB was what my grandmother called him. George Bolker was
his full name. This is his favorite chair. That's where he'd fall asleep all the time, eat snacks and
watch ball games. So whenever I went over to see him he was typically in a chair, and there'll be
all sorts of junk over on the table next to him and all of those things are of importance. There's
always boxes of Kleenex all over the place. He was drinking either Diet Coke or coffee. There's
a cordless phone that he would always answer and say obnoxious things into because it was
never for him. It was for my grandmother. Somebody asked me about this painting, and they're
like, it's not really a picture of your grandfather, it's a picture of all this stuff on the table. I said,
well that is kind of a picture of my grandfather. We ended up talking about the remote control.
The remote was usually the reason why in 2008 or 2009 I would be called over at random times
to my grandparents house, now my house, to help them with things. It was usually things like
they turned off the television and didn't know how to turn it back on. I had to deal with that
remote all the time. I was trying to figure out how to paint it because it’s an old remote so I had
to do a lot of googling to find that exact remote because I knew I what it looked like in my head.
I wanted to be specific.

Sammy, 2022
Wyatt: This is Sammy again, and this is a typical Sammy being nervous pose. He's very smart,
and everything, but in certain social interactions I feel like he's just always on the edge of the
seat a little bit. He does this thing where he looks down and he puts his hands on his coat like
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this. I told them, that's a very Sammy pose. His sister knew what I meant by this and I don't
think he realized that that's something that he does. But either way, when I painted this I wanted
to paint the background like a bunch of nothing. Like a wide open landscape because he has
decided he's gonna go off on all these adventures. He's planning right now for one next month.
And he just wants to go out in the middle of nowhere and see what happens. So this is like him
on his maiden voyage.

Silas, 2022
Wyatt: This is Silas, but this wasn't so much about painting him. My painting style is very loose
and abstract, but I try to get a high degree of likeness with as little information as possible.
Painting photo realistically is difficult. There's a lot of technical challenges, but once you get
there, it's not actually that hard. It's trying to figure out how to convey the same amount of
information with actually doing less. So this is kind of a good example of that. When you squint,
and look, you know that this is Silas without even having to focus your eyes on anything.
Because if you know Silas you know that he just kind of flops into a chair like that. That's his
pose.

Amaya, 2022
Wyatt: This is another one of my friend Ashley's kids. I like these pictures of children in swings,
because you get the movement of swinging and you don't have to be literal about the
background. Everybody knows what's going on there. I think maybe it says something about
whimsy or something about being a child and the chaos of a child and swinging back and forth.
So this painting and the other painting of Elizabeth, I enjoyed painting them, but I mostly enjoy
inventing the backgrounds.

Rescuers, 2022
Wyatt: This is my wife Brittany again, and this is our new dog. Just a couple of weeks before the
show opened we adopted Murphy. He was a dog that we got at the Humane Society. I knew
Brittany wanted a dog. And I wanted to go also but it was kind of hard because of the
circumstances with our last dog. When we went, I was unaware that we’d probably end up
choosing a dog, but then this is the one that she had had her eye on. For some reason she saw
him advertised online and thought he was cute. Then we asked to see him and he just ran right up
to me. This probably happens every time somebody goes to the shelter, but he just ran up to me
and literally hugged me, and I was like, well shit I guess we got a dog. It's funny, because like he
is he is a great dog, but we've learned a lot of things with him. This was his second time at the
shelter and someone had found him in the same parking lot. He's had some trust issues, but he
immediately trusted Brittany and I. He's learning how to deal with other people. He's very timid
and it's been an interesting process. And I think we're all learning a lot right now with Murphy.

Feed, 2022
 15

Wyatt: This is my father in law. Again, working on the farm. I painted this painting a couple
times. So the first time I painted it I nailed the portrait, and I was really happy with it. Under
certain circumstances I'll do the portrait and then I'll work around the rest of the picture. Because
once you get the likeness of the person then everything else is a supporting act really. But then
when I started painting the rest of the winter landscape, which was the thing I was really trying
to convey, the portrait just wasn't working. I did this a couple of times and repainted it and I
figured out that the best way to represent him was to undo everything. So there was a life lesson
there that I think I've learned many times, and that is that usually you have to paint a really tight
and realistic portrait two or three times before you realize that you just need to paint it in 10
marks. But it takes two or three attempts to decide that.