Rosemary Elizabeth Waterhouse-Hayward in Morelia, Mexico - late 60s

Farm Road - Andrew Wyeth

I have always admired the paintings of NC Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth. I particularly like the works of Andrew Wyeth because of the relationship he had with his favourite subject and muse Helga Testorf.

Because I believe that depending on what you look for in social media their algorithms are quite smart. Both m Twitter/X and Facebook shower me with photographs of photographers I admire and such painters as Joaquín Sorolla, Van Gogh and most recently the Wyeths.

When I spotted this painting called Farm Road which features Helga Testorf I immediately connected to a photograph I took of Rosemary many years ago in Morelia, Mexico. I have no memory of taking it as I have no memory of Rosemary ever having a braid. I printed the photograph to fit a $4.25 London Drugs frame. The beauty of being able to scan my negatives with my Epson scanner and then make inkjets to size means that I can buy cheap frames or nice frames in antique stores and print to fit them.

What you see here is pseudo cyanotype. It is not a real one. I have Corel Paint Shop Pro XII and it has one app button called cyanotype. My cyanotype expert friend, Ralph Rinke is the only person that can look at my fakes and by how the image sits on the paper he knows it’s fake.

Whichever way you look at all this I always harp that what makes us human is our ability to associate. Thus Wyeth and this amateur have something in common.