I’ve always found this painting by Andrew Wyeth fascinating. Not so much because it is a beautiful painting, and presents us with one of the most mysterious models that is familiar to most Americans. I found this painting most interesting because it presents us with a young woman that obviously has a disability that expresses itself by altering her physique from what we normally expect, to something that draws our scrutiny as much as it does our empathy. We wish to find her alluring, but as we recognize her misshapen limbs, we recoil slightly. Then we lean in, because she is like us, human. She yearns to walk, we feel and understand that desire. We empathize…
But Andrew has left his model Clothed. And if you know Andrew Wyeth, you know that he likes his young models unclothed. So I’ve contemplated this decision of his for decades. And now on his birthday, I’ve finally decided to do what Andrew could not. Present this young woman in all her female beauty, as pure, earthen and well-tended as the landscape that Andrew placed her in.
