Guy Anderson

Guy Anderson (November 20, 1906 – April 30, 1998) was an American artist known primarily for his oil painting who lived most of his life in the Puget Sound region of the United States.

His work is in the collections of numerous museums including the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He has been called "Perhaps the most powerful artist to emerge from the Northwest School".

Anderson's mature work often draws from a set of symbols (circle, spiral, egg, seed, wave) he developed from the study of religious, mythical, and philosophical sources.

The symbols are frequently combined with the human figure.

Anderson grew up in a semi-rural setting north of Seattle, in the town of Edmonds, Washington, where he'd been born on November 20, 1906.

Some of his early paintings portrayed his family home.

A piano was an important presence in his house.

His father, Irving Anderson, was a carpenter-builder and also a musician.

From an early age Guy was intrigued by other cultures; he was particularly fascinated by the woodcarvings of Northern Coastal native tribes, and by the collection of Japanese prints owned by his piano teacher.

As soon as he was old enough to do so on his own, he began commuting to the Seattle Public Library by bus to study art books.

After graduating from Edmonds High School, Anderson briefly studied with Alaskan scenic painter Eustace Ziegler, who encouraged Anderson's career-long preference for oil paints, and taught him how to draw nude figures, which would become important features of his work.

In 1929, Anderson applied for and won a Tiffany Foundation scholarship and spent the summer studying at the Tiffany estate on Long Island, New York.

As there were no art museums in Seattle at that time, he delighted in weekend visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, examining the works of Rembrandt, Goya, Whistler, and many others.

On his return to Washington in the fall of 1929, Anderson set up a studio in an outbuilding on his parents' property, and had paintings included in a group show at the Fifth Avenue Gallery in downtown Seattle.

The show piqued the interest of 19-year-old painter Morris Graves, who lived near Anderson, and the two became lifelong friends.

With the opening of the Seattle Art Museum in 1933, Anderson befriended its founder, Dr. Richard Eugene Fuller, and worked there for several years, off-and-on, as an installer and children's art teacher.

His lifelong interest in Asian art and culture was deepened by both close exposure to the museum's major collection of Asian art and artefacts, and by socializing and sometimes painting with members of Seattle's vibrant Asian arts community.

In 1934 they traveled together to California in a beat-up panel truck, attempting to sell their paintings along the way.

They also spent time painting near Monte Cristo in the North Cascade mountains.

In the Northwest Annual Exhibition of 1935 he won the Katherine Baker Purchase Award, and the museum mounted a solo exhibition of his work the following year.

In 1937, Anderson helped refurbish a burned-out house Morris Graves had discovered near the small town of La Conner, Washington, in the Skagit Valley, about sixty miles north of Seattle.

The two decorated the earthen-floored studio with furniture made of driftwood and raw cedar logs.

Like many artists during the Great Depression, Anderson worked for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project.

Hired by the program's Washington director, R. Bruce Inverarity, he taught at the Spokane Art Center in 1939-40, alongside painters Carl Morris and Clyfford Still, sculptor Hilda Deutsch, and muralist Ruth Egri.

The center was widely praised as being among the most popular and productive of the more than 100 community art centers opened nationwide by the FAP.

Throughout the 1940s and 50s Anderson was very much involved in Seattle's bustling art community.

Morris Graves and Mark Tobey had become artists of international reputation; Tobey's studio and the home of painters Margaret and Kenneth Callahan become centers of lively socializing and philosophical debate.

Otto Seligman and Zoe Dusanne were championing abstract art at their respective galleries, while SAM, the Henry Art Gallery, and the Frye Art Museum cautiously supported it.

Anderson taught at the Helen Bush School in Seattle and Ruth Pennington's Fidalgo Art School in La Conner, while working at SAM, building stone mosaic patios for well-to-do patrons, and producing driftwood art for the commercial market.

He lived in Seattle's University District, but spent much of his time painting at Graves' studio in La Conner or at the Callahans' summer place in Granite Falls, Washington.

After a very successful show at SAM in 1945, he purchased his own cabin in Granite Falls.

In September 1953 he became nationally known when Life magazine ran a major feature presenting Anderson, Tobey, Graves, and Kenneth Callahan as the "big four" of Northwest mystic art.

In 1959 Anderson left Seattle for good.

He rented a house on the edge of La Conner, where he found inspiration from the vast skies and natural settings of the surrounding area.

He gathered rocks and driftwood, which he composed around his rustic home in various assemblages.

For a time, he rented a studio on the main street of La Conner.

Later, he bought property at 415 Caledonia Street, building a house and studio there.

Beginning in the 1960’s he painted on brown roofing paper that came in long rolls and permitted him to paint on a grand scale.

Anderson said: "I read the Vedanta and the Vedas and I think about the order of the universe. The more we send men out into space, the more I realize we already are in space, floating out there. The whole order is preordained, in some miraculous way. I think all creation is magical."