Mary Whyte’s impressive series of watercolors honors armed service members after they return from battle.
It took seven years and trips to all 50 states for Mary Whyte to complete her newest watercolor series.
“The last project I did was called Working South, and it depicted blue-collar workers in vanishing industries. As that was coming to a close, I knew I wanted to follow it up with something even bigger and grander in scope,” Whyte says.
She knew she wanted to encompass every state— create a portrait of America that showcased the diversity of the country—but wasn’t sure how to go about choosing those Americans. “That’s when it came to me,” she says. “That, to me, what makes somebody the most American is someone who’s willing to lay down their life for their country. So it became a project about veterans.”
The result, titled We The People, features citizens of all ages, all heritages and from all five branches of the military, and is the subject of an exhibition opening in Charleston, South Carolina, in October.
Finding veteran subjects wasn’t as easy as Whyte had thought it might be. “I knew I wanted to paint everyone from astronauts to homeless veterans and everything in between,” she says. “I made a list of which states I was most likely to find a dairy farmer or a coal miner or a tattoo artist and started with that.”
But veterans make up less than 10 percent of the United States’ population. “There were a lot of phone calls and a lot of research,” Whyte admits. Local chapters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and small-town chambers of commerce, who were proud of their local heroes, turned out to be invaluable resources.
Denne historien er fra August 2019-utgaven av American Art Collector.
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Denne historien er fra August 2019-utgaven av American Art Collector.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Guardians of the Temple – Simon Dinnerstein reflects on The Fulbright Triptych 50 years later.
The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University exhibits Simon Dinnerstein's The Fulbright Triptych haunts the visual lexicon of 20th century American representational art. Fifty years have passed since Dinnerstein completed the painting in 1974.
A City Perspective
Leslie Gaduzo has always been interIested in art. Since childhood, he has been drawing constantly, from single point perspective drawings at age 10 to complex architectural drawings.
Living Legacy
The Butler Institue hosts Allied Artists of America's 110th Annual Juried Exhibition.
Elegant yet Approachable
The second edition of the RTIA Show presents even more art to explore and expanded special programming.
Figuratively Speaking
New York has always been an epicenter of artists on the edge of excellence, pushing the envelope and finding their voices.
JAMES AYERS: The Importance of Play
Like many artists, James Ayers' work took a turn during the Covid-19 pandemic. Seeing the enjoyment his kids took from playing with paint in his studio and exploring their creativity inspired him.
GINA MINICHINO: Playing with Food
Gina Minichino started her journey in visual arts because of Charles Schulz. \"He was my earliest influence for drawing and the reason I wanted to be a cartoonist,\" she says.
Island Light
The Cuttyhunk Island Artists' Residency is held in a sprawling, 100-year-old house on an island off the southern coast of Massachusetts.
Solitary Forms
Hogan Brown has been working with Arcadia Contemporary for two and half years and is excited to be featured in his first solo show at the gallery. He doesn't take for granted the many talented figurative painters Arcadia represents and is thrilled to be among them.
Living the Dream
Counterintuitively, David Gluck was a painter before taking up tattooing little more than a decade ago. While skin is a completely different substrate and ink a far cry from oil paint, the skills must be transferrable to some degree because there is a wait-time of nine months to get an appointment with him.