art.wikisort.org - 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 (age 80) Floyd County, Georgia[1][2]
Known for	Folk 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

Further reading

• Gimenez, Patricia (2010). "I'm Holding the Brush": Myth and Memory in the Paintings of Linda Anderson (Thesis). Kent State University.
• Anderson, Linda; Kraskin, Sandra; Sidney Mishkin Gallery (2001). Flashes of memory: paintings by self-taught artist Linda Anderson, March 23 to April 19, 2001. New York, NY: Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College. OCLC 47212972.

External links

• images of Anderson's work on ArtNet

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