Harbor Theater invites our members to a free event: “Jamie Wyeth and the Unflinching Eye” (2024; 1 hour, 20 minutes) on Sunday, Sept. 8. There will be a wine and dessert reception beginning at 6:30 p.m. The film starts at 7 p.m. The event is free to all Harbor Theater Members. Others may purchase $12 tickets at the door after 6:30 p.m.

This is the first feature length documentary that embraces the full scope of the American artist’s life and work. As the heir to an unparalleled three-generation dynasty in American art, Jamie Wyeth struggles to find his own voice during the colorful turmoil of pop culture and politics from the 1960s to the present.

The Wyeth name is widely known. And while Jamie Wyeth has given a lot of interviews in his time, “Jamie Wyeth and the Unflinching Eye” is the first film that fully reveals deep personal insights into his artistic thinking. It’s also the first film that establishes his place as a great American artist in his own right apart from his considerable family legacy. The son of Andrew and grandson of N.C., Jamie is the last in line of artists that spans a century of narrative painting. He was nurtured in a world of painting and studios–amongst the gentle hills of the Brandywine Valley and the rocky coasts of Maine.

As a young man in New York City, he was at the epicenter of art, fashion and high society, including an immersion into Andy Warhol’s Factory scene of the 1970s.The film travels from the Wilmington, Delaware farm that Jamie shared with his wife and muse, Phyllis Mills Wyeth, to the Chadds Ford studios of his father and grandfather, to islands of Maine, where Jamie also finds inspiration for his work. Though many of his works depict the Maine coast, animals, and wildlife, Jamie Wyeth has also painted portraits of political and entertainment figures, including the likes of President John F. Kennedy, Rudolf Nureyev, Andy Warhol, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The filmmaking team had unprecedented access to the artist, his personal archives as well those of his distinguished artist family members. Jamie Wyeth and the Unflinching Eye is rich in archival footage that creates a sense of time and place. It is packed with sketches, drawings and paintings from the artist’s oeuvre, to illustrate the breadth and depth of his work to date. Layers of complexity in the art are revealed and celebrated by family members and some of the most preeminent scholars of American art.

We know that many Maine residents will have also visited the current exhibition “Jamie Wyeth: Unsettled” at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, but if not, the exhibition continues through Oct. 13, and may be even more interesting to visitors who have also seen this film.