About

Biography

Painting has always been part of my life. Now, as my career as an archivist and historian enters its final chapters, I am progressing to life as a full-time artist. As an archivist, I preserved the evidence of history to ensure understanding of where we have been. As an artist of witness, I lay paint, my testimony, for future generations to understand where we are now.

Statement

Each painting is a journey: it begins, I embark on a veiled path, enfolded in process.

The world is full of colors one can almost taste, feel, and hear; shapes moving in kinship; and mythical stories told in languages without words. Hue and form help me understand the world. With each layer of paint, I make choices; shapes and colors, once buried and presumed lost are suddenly rediscovered and surfaced in cycles, fragments; creating new juxtapositions.

My artworks are created applying oil paints, watercolors, or pastels on a range of surfaces including canvas, board, and paper nurturing the expression of color, texture, and form. The pigments are applied using centuries-old techniques but greatly influenced by the artists of An American Place and De Blaue Reiter.

My compositions express the challenges to all living things as society relentlessly commodifies existence during the Anthropocene. Humans chose to conquer or to find kinship, and our actions are magnified by our numbers. As an artist, my work captures glimpses of the world’s beauty and inspires preservation of the earth for future generations, because mankind’s thoughtless disregard for nature places our future in jeopardy.

When my brush connects with the “canvas,” I bring intent and courage. Layer by layer, I take inspiration from the poet Paul Valery in Mauvaises Pensées et Autres: “the painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.”

Resume

Selected Exhibitions

Mostly Coastal, Sweet Adelines, 2015

Discovery, Sweet Adelines, 2016

Chalk Hill Vineyard, 2017

Juried Shows

Yosemite Renaissance 32, 2017, awarded honorable mention for Mt. Whitney in Winter

Artist Residencies

Chalk Hill Artist Residency 2017 www.chalkhillresidency.com

Education

University of California, Davis B.A. Art Studio, 1981

Rob Anderson https://visualaids.org/artists/rob-anderson