Linda Anderson (artist)

Linda Anderson (born September 3,1941)[1] is an American, self-taught folk artist who began painting when she was 40 years old.[1][2] According to NPR, she is considered "one of the foremost living memory painters."[2]

Linda Anderson
Born (1941-09-03) September 3, 1941
Floyd County, Georgia
Known forFolk art

Early life

Anderson was born September 3, 1941, in Floyd County, Georgia.[1] She grew up poor in Clarkesville, Georgia in a tenant farmer family with four siblings.[2][3] "Everybody worked. If you were able, you worked. I picked beans, pulled corn. I got my first rifle at 10. I shot rabbit and squirrel for our dinner." After her father died while she was in her teens, the family was forced to move to "a house with a dirt floor and no indoor plumbing"; she quit school and worked as a maid and a nurse's aide to help.

Previous to taking up painting she was a quilter. She was married and working as a nurse when she took up painting in 1980, at age 40, during a time she was caring for her sick daughter.[3]

Discovery

In 1981 Anderson took her work to an art fair in Homer, Georgia. Atlanta collector Carolyn Caswell, impressed with the work, introduced Anderson to Judith Alexander, a gallery owner and folk art expert.[3]

Exhibitions

Anderson's first gallery show was in 1982, arranged by Alexander.[3] Anderson has exhibited her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, the Asheville Art Museum in North Carolina, the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH[1] among other venues. In 2004 she had a retrospective show at the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia.[3]

Style

Anderson is known for her memory paintings.[1][3] Common subjects are vignettes from her childhood growing up in rural Georgia in the 1940s and 1950s, biblical subject matter, animals, and portraits of celebrities.[1][2] In addition to her paintings, she creates with oil crayons on fine-grain sandpaper representations of the auditory-visual synaesthesia she experiences during severe migraine attacks.[1]

Anderson also whittles and makes glass beads.[3]

Collections

Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art,[4] the High Museum of Art[5] and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia.[1]

Publications
  • Anderson, Linda (2009). Flashes of Memory: An Appalachian Self-portrait. Kennesaw State University Press. ISBN 978-1-933483-12-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)

References
  1. "Linda Anderson". Museum of Contemporary Art. Archived from the original on 7 April 2019. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  2. "Linda Anderson - Folk Artist and Memory Painter". Georgia Public Broadcasting. 28 May 2008. Archived from the original on 7 April 2019. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  3. Fox, Catherine (28 December 2003). "Painter merges nostalgia, 'edginess'". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. pp. K.1. Archived from the original on 4 May 2021. Retrieved 16 November 2021 – via Barbara Archer Gallery.
  4. "Linda Anderson - Mother and Child". Whitney Museum of American Art. Archived from the original on 7 April 2019. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  5. "The Banishment from the Garden of Eden". High Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 3 December 2021. Retrieved 27 December 2021.

Further reading
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