Portly pigs, graceful horses, and plucky chickens figure largely in Jamie Wyeth's lively depictions of farm work and life in the current exhibition at the Brandywine River Museum. These seemingly docile creatures populate serene landscapes and mix with images of farm objects in a world that the artist knows well---his family farm in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and its environs.

"I always said that if born in New York, I would be painting cabs or something, but it happens that I was raised in an area where there were farms," says Jamie Wyeth. "There are wonderful objects on the farm and things about farm life, so that is where the attraction is."

These works are in stark contrast to Wyeth's take on animals as viewed from his Maine studio. His powerful series "The Seven Deadly Sins," exhibited at Maine's Farnsworth Art Museum in 2009, depicted seagulls, "nasty birds" that the artist has long observed in coastal Maine, symbolically acting out the sins in dramatic tableaux.

The Brandywine River Museum exhibition "Farm Work by Jamie Wyeth" (June 11-Sept. 11, 2011) surveys five decades of his observations at Point Lookout, the farm on the Brandywine that Wyeth moved to in the late 1960s, and other farms that have made an impact on his oeuvre such as the Olson farm in Maine that was made famous by his father, Andrew, in "Christina's World" (Museum of Modern Art).

Another Chadds Ford farm provided the subject of an enormous pig named Den-Den, who became the subject of his life-size Portrait of Pig. Wyeth painted the portrait at Point Lookout where he took the pig to live in order to save her from the butcher. Den-Den was joined by a coterie of animals that grew over the years to include chickens, geese, goats, cattle, horses, and wild birds. All have been subjects of paintings by Wyeth, who says, "Animals just intrigue the hell out of me, really much more than people."

Other aspects of the farm have also held a strong attraction for the artist. Barns, plows, saws, buckets, and bales of hay intrigue him as ordinary objects and strong shapes. The farm is a magical association with objects that are reflected in his interpretations. He describes the painting Tin Woodsman as being informed by The Wizard of Oz, saying, "Through this whole farm obsession of mine, I sort of viewed myself as a latter day Dorothy - my life is filled with real and imagined characters."

Farm Work by Jamie Wyeth is the first exhibition to focus exclusively on this subject. It includes over 70 works drawn from private and public collections across the country. The accompanying catalogue is fully illustrated in color and contains extensive commentary by the artist.

The exhibition is supported by The Davenport Family Foundation Fund for Exhibitions. The fully illustrated catalogue is made possible by a generous grant from The Davenport Family Foundation.

The Brandywine River Museum is located on U.S. Route 1 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. For more information, please call 610-388-2700 or visit www.brandywinemuseum.org.