Scott Anderson
When
starting a painting, Scott finds that he often follows a pattern of a process.
He usually works from a photo that he has taken or a found photo as a
blueprint. However, he does not
copy the photo, he uses it as the base idea only; often times he says that he even pushes himself away from
that original blueprint anyway.
His main example of this was a painting he did of a boar’s head, which
he ended up turning on its side and made it into a sort of geometric
landscape.
He
sometimes finds inspiration from things that are found in his life. Wunderkammer is a German word that
means collection of small things to represent curiosities or rarities in
worldly items. You see the
influence of Wunderkammer in his works along with interior design (the interior
design influence comes from his mother and his wife). Another influence of his is Mythology. He finds the progression/change through
time to be intriguing. An example
of this change in history is how the ancient god Odin translated to Norwegian
gnomes and then to Santa Clause.
An example of a work of his that shows this progression is Funeral (not shown) which depicts a Viking Funeral
that looks futuristic but historical simultaneously. He also finds influence from little shops in his town that
sell folk art. A way that he
translated those ideas into his works was the painting Under Earth (not shown). Finally, he has an interest in utopia/dystopia society
in relation to the future and world fairs. This is clearly shown in his painting that depicts the
Heliport building.
He
also draws influence from historical famous artists, in particular: Robert
Rauschenberg. Anderson spoke of
his person connection to Robert Rauschenberg’s works from the 50s and 60s. He had a special interest in
Rauschenberg’s ability to take images that by themselves can imply strong
narratives but Rauschenberg places them in a way that they lose that meaning
and just become part of the painting.
This is something that Anderson, too, has mastered in his own
works. His identifiable imagery
gets well mixed into a confusion of interior/exterior spaces and geometric
patterns. Anderson’s works seem
chaotic, but really they are quite compositionally masterful.
