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Among the many elements of design, those of color, line, pattern and composition are particularly significant in Anderson’s work. His development and exploration as an artist is marked by an absorbing use of each of these tools at different times. Training at the New York Parsons School of Design and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts put him in touch with the strong academic training of the 1920s when Impressionism was still the style of choice.

However, over the next three decades his own distinctive style took shape. In the thousands of ink drawings that Anderson did in the 1940s, he achieved such a sureness and beauty of line that he has often been called a 20th century “master of line.” His exploration of shape and pattern is particularly marked in the early and middle periods as well. But it is his use of color that shows the greatest evolution. It moves from the more traditional dark palette and earth tones in the early paintings, to the primaries of red, yellow, and blue during the middle or Oldfields period, and finally to a virtual rainbow in his mature watercolors.

This exhibition cuts across these style periods and across subject matter to follow his development as an artist. It contains drawings in ink and crayon, watercolors, and trunk paintings from gouache and tempera.

Just as language is made of words, phrases, and sentences to contain and convey a thought, so line, color, and pattern express a visual idea. Such elements of art may not sound interesting in themselves, because they are like studying the alphabet and learning to read. They are, indeed, the ABCs of visual literacy. Art is like a foreign language full of letters we recognize, but we know there is more beneath that surface. Walter Anderson, by exploring the elements, became a master linguist in their use, and we the viewers, can follow his subtleties by revisiting his native language.

LINE

Line has character. It can describe, it can interpret, it can even become imaginary. If we follow a line, it takes us on a journey through landscape or feeling. A favorite resource of line for Anderson was Best-Maugard’s seven line shapes that were drawn from the history of art and formed, to him, the basis of all drawing.

These graphic designs or motifs can be developed into pictures, but they are also found embedded in the most complex art works. Line can make a thing appear strong or weak, awkward or delicate, or it can convey the way it moves.

It can also be expressive by varying its width and leaving spaces to show the light and shadow of an edge. And sometimes when the artist makes your eye skip from one point to another, a structure of imaginary lines is created.

COLOR

Some spot of color would usually give the key to the understanding of the rest, a patch of red more vivid than the rest… would find friends in the pink of a roof or the door…
– W. A.

Color is emotional. Its richness appeals to eye and heart. It is expressive of mood as well as changeable appearance. Anderson delighted in the iridescence of a feather or an oyster shell, and the changeable color of an octopus or the sky. Delicate tints of reds, yellows, and blues mark the Oldfields watercolors on large paper, but saturation and variation of color becomes more intense in later works. Blues move into
purples and lilacs, reds become orange or pink, and yellow lives in chartreuse.

Green and purple or lilac are the colors of mystery. Blue and white – special dispensational or divine love Blue purple – mystery or night. Red purple to green – natural harmony.
– W. A.

PATTERN

Repetition is not pattern. The magic of pattern occurs regardless of effort and it is magic and musical, it is infinite variations on the same theme.
– W. A.

Pattern is theme and variations. We often see shape in multiples – leaves on a tree, people walking
or flocks of birds. Pattern can move from duplication to variation and delights the mind by finding
similarities or differences. Pattern can show distance or it can indicate change. Anderson often stacks or uses multiples of the same image especially during the Oldfields period. Sometimes he emphasizes the uniqueness of different views of the same thing, such as the head of a cow. Here, pattern moves away from duplication and turns into variation.

COMPOSITION

Growth means symmetry and is a continuous process which relates parts to the whole . . . [then] an automatic change takes place like an explosion which produces the flower.
– W. A.

Composition is the magic that occurs when you put it all together. Just as letters and words form stories or essays, so elements of line, color and shape form a
composition – a visual story or essay. Anderson’s compositions often fill the paper so full that we are led beyond the edge of the page; sometimes the fish or birds are contained within the edges; or other times like haiku, he catches the essence of the animal and leaves much of the paper empty.

The color is often related, the shapes indicate depth by placement and pattern through their repetition.

The way an artist uses the elements determines his style, and the changes in Anderson’s style mirror his periods of exploration. His style changes as he changes. Each period and medium reaches a high level of achievement, which produced many masterpieces throughout his life. Personal preference
determines what one likes best – which, in the work of Walter Anderson, gives
much latitude.

– Patricia Pinson

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FRIENDS