When Andrew paints, time stands still

“Andrew Wyeth: Watercolors, Temperas and Drawings,” through May 21, 2004, Hadlock and Wyeth Study Center Galleries at the Farnsworth Art Museum, Main Street, Rockland, 596-6457.

Andrew Wyeth’s work is a delicate balance of permanence and impermanence, the passage of time and the immediacy of the moment.

But time stands still in two new exhibits at the Farnsworth Art Museum. It’s nearly impossible to discern between Wyeth’s most recent Maine work and paintings he made nearly a half-century ago. A group of 10 watercolors completed between 2001 and 2003, which make their debut in the Wyeth Study Center Gallery, resonate as strongly as classic temperas such as “Her Room” and “Two if by Sea,” on view in the neighboring Hadlock Gallery.

There’s a bit of mischief in Wyeth’s new work. Laundry hangs from a Port Clyde porch, drying in the breeze on a blazingly clear day in his humorously titled “On Line,” which could’ve been painted anywhere, today, or a century ago. The same could be said for “Follow the Leader,” in which two huge, brilliant sunflowers look like they’re gamboling through a field.

Wyeth’s sunflowers may stand together, but the humans in his paintings often stand alone. In the lush, mossy “Rain Forest,” a striking, blonde model peers out from behind the greenery like a deer or a gazelle. The same model, Wyeth’s friend Ann Call, stares out at the gray sea, her coat collar turned up against the wind, in “The Erratic,” named not for the figure, but for the giant boulder behind her.

In these recent works, man is at once a part of and apart from nature. And at times, man is absent from nature. In his study for the 2003 painting “The Carry,” bubbling water falls over rocks in a verdant swirl of motion, while “Albinos” depicts a stack of white pumpkins sitting before a house on Benner Island on a cloudy fall day. But a tiny flash of color – a lone orange pumpkin – brightens the scene.

His sweeping, striking compositions speak quietly of solitude, of nature, of time and timelessness. There is always a sense of intimacy, and that’s the power of Wyeth’s work – for a fleeting moment, he draws us into his world, and that moment has the potential to change the way we see our world, as well.

Kristen Andresen is a Style Desk writer. She can be reached at kandresen@bangordailynews.net.