J. Gordon Anderson - Contemporary Art

I have now been back in MD for well over one month, serving as rector of St. Alban's parish in Joppa, MD. This is the parish where I was ordained, so there are lots of friends here. Additionally it is in the region where I was reared, so it is something of a "homecoming" being here. My priorities in the church are youth, music, preaching, and missions - essentially in that order. Having been around the block a bit as a priest and churchman for so many years now I think that our continuing Anglican parishes are weakest in these areas. The youth are my main priority. It is heartbreaking to see so many pictures of youth who once attended the church and who, though they live in the area, no longer attend - not even for Christmas or Easter. Our continuing Anglican churches specialize in this failure so it seems. The strangest thing about it is that it doesn't seem to bother anyone - either on a parish or institutional level. Why do so many kids grow up in our churches and ...

Sorry for the dearth of posts. The end of 2010 was quite busy and dare I say traumatic with having to move. My family has no relocated to Maryland where we live outside of Baltimore metro area. As this is home to us it was a welcome move. Here in MD I serve as rector of a small country church. Unfortunately on the trip up some of my art, including my very first painting, was lost. That was the "traumatic" part of the move. Luckily the rest of my work escaped major damage. My work is mostly in storage now, as are my supplies and my studio equipment, because we are living in small condo while looking for permanent housing. It goes without saying that the bulk of my energy lately is being spent on the church, getting settled, etc. so I have not been able to get back to work yet. I hope to begin painting again next month, and work on small icons to sell later this year. The nature of my vocation as a parish priest in a "continuing" Anglican Church has necessitated movin...

While in seminary I read through bits and pieces of Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity , as I was told (or discovered myself) at some point that this work addressed many of the Puritan party's complaints against the established Church of England, particularly in the areas of liturgy and ecclesiology. This in contrast to earlier Anglican apologists, such as John Jewel, who wrote mainly against Rome. Growing up Presbyterian, and having imbibed the works of J.I. Packer - an Anglican of English Calvinist persuasion - I figured that Hooker would of especial interest to me... and he was, but I never got beyond those bits and pieces that I read piecemeal. Lamentably, while in seminary there was no time to give Hooker a more thorough read, as I was weighed down reading and studying interesting but no doubt non-Anglican works and writers (mainly documents from Vatican II, books by Avery Dulles and David Tracy, etc.). Never having read through Hooker's Laws completely, however, ...

The New Yorker has a great article about Charles Burchfield . It memorably describes him as a "one man movement." His art has something of the lonely quality of his friend, Hopper (and maybe Wyeth?), but there is a psychological, tortured side to it, which the article describes as not so much a commentary on the small towns where he lived and worked, but rather on on his own interior struggle with gloom and spiritual unease. One of my art professors compared a lot of my early work to that of Burchfield's. Not knowing who he was at the time, I looked him up and saw the similarity, though I think now my art looks rather different from his (not completely, but still different enough). But since that first comparison however I have always been interested in this great 20th century American master.

My family is moving to Maryland in a few weeks so I can serve as rector of a parish there. Moving is always traumatic for the artist. 1) There is always gobs of stuff to move. Artists tend to collect more 'junk' than your average folk... pictures, props, supplies, etc. not to mention his own work, so moving always presents a major challenge. 2) Losing a studio space (especially a nice one like I have) is very sad, because the artist gets used to his environment and to some extent it plays an important role in the creation of his work. It takes me months to acclimate to a new studio, which is quite disruptive to the artistic process. 3) While packing the artist cannot work on art or anything else very easily; packing takes up all of your time and energy. So this move, like all of them before, will be an artistic nightmare at least for the short term. But the bright side of it is that besides being closer to family and old friends we will be living in a major metropolitan area. T...

In December the family will be packing up and moving to Maryland where I will serve as rector of St. Alban's in Joppa, MD. As I am from that area, and was ordained in that parish, it is something of a homecoming. It goes without saying that I will miss everyone at my current parish of St. Francis in Virginia. Every time a priest moves to a new parish in our church it sets off a chain reaction, where the bishop has to scramble to find a man to fill the position that is opening up. In as small a church as ours his options are limited, whereas we do not have enough priests, and whereas those who are available may not have the desire or ability to move out of state, etc. I was lucky at St. Francis because I brought in a priest from an outside jurisdiction to help out, and he was later received into our diocese, and he will be taking over for me, but he was literally the only man in the region available to take over as priest-in-charge. The parish probably would have liked a choice of w...

I advise all artists who are serious about trying to promote and sell their work to start a website of their own, and then have business cards made that have the web address on it, as well as other contact information. My website over the years has helped generate sales, shows, commissions, and other forms of publicity. While a fair amount of work has to go into maintaining these sites, the payoff is generally far greater than the work involved. While starting and maintaining an art website is easy, organizing it is another matter entirely. There seem to be two approaches to organizing it: 1) it is simply an online gallery, showing your work over the years. Many successful, major artists do this. 2) it is an online clearinghouse and way to sell your work, with pricing and purchase information. Or 3) it is a little of both. I have to admit that I don't really know which approach is best. I've tried all of them over the years. What I do now is more like a combination of all thre...