James Welling is a photographer who has admired the work of artist Andrew Wyeth to the point of wanting to walk where Wyeth walked and shoot what Wyeth painted.

The results of the five-year adventure, which took him from Chadds Ford to Maine, are now on display at the Brandywine River Museum of Art.

Museum Director Tom Padon referred to the project as a “dialogue” between two artists of different media.

“Jim has brought such an interesting new view to Wyeth because he’s honed in on so many things about the way Wyeth looked at this landscape…And for a lens-based artist to work in this dialogue with a painter is particularly interesting,” Padon said.

According to Welling, the project is a way of “translating” another artist’s work.

“Things Beyond Resemblance” features 50 inkjet images Welling made from photographs taken on and around the Kuerner Farm in Chadds Ford and the Olson House, the setting for Wyeth’s “Christina’s World,” in Cushing, Maine.

One of the photos in the exhibit is also titled “Christina’s World,” taken on the grounds of the Olson Farm, showing the house and barn, but without the human figure.

Welling also shows the interior of the Kuerner Farm with “Anna’s Kitchen” and “Anna’s Wallpaper.” There’s also “Kuerner Hill Moonlight,” the scene of Wyeth’s “Snow Hill.” This too, is without people.

Welling said he had always appreciated Wyeth’s work, but was inspired to do the project after he read of Wyeth’s death in January 2009. It was an exploration into the influence of one artist on another who uses a different media.

He first encountered Wyeth’s work as a teenager, from seeing his paintings in magazines, such as Life and Newsweek, and while visiting the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Connecticut where he lived.

Welling said he appreciated Wyeth’s work from the beginning but, “I had it beaten out of me” by a drawing teacher while attending art school at Carnegie-Melon.

“I put away that interest, but the influence was so strong that when I took up photography years later, I can see now the way I approached portraiture or other subjects, I was strongly influenced by looking at Wyeth’s work,” Welling said.

In addition to “Things Beyond Resemblance,” there is also an outdoor exhibit, “Gradients.”

According to Padon, “Gradients” is the first of what will be a series of site-specific commissions that will be displayed on the grounds of the museum and other Brandywine Conservancy and River Museum of Art locations.

The museum commissioned Welling to create the sculptures, which are color gradients based on photos taken in July. The color gradients, similar to a color spectrum in appearance, are painted on metal and are located at nine different locations at the museum, the Kuerner Farm and the Andrew Wyeth studio.

Padon added that it made sense because “a lot of the investigations Jim was doing in photo series extended into the sculptures.” He referred to them as “elegies to light and color.”

The museum director also said the colors will change against the backdrop as the season changes.

The exhibits run through Nov. 15.

(Top photo: Photographer James Welling, center, talks with reporters during a press preview for “Things Beyond Resemblance.”  At far rights Brandywine River Museum of Art Director Tom Padon. To the left is guest curator Philipp Kaiser.)