J. Gordon Anderson - Contemporary Art

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...

A woman I dated a number of years ago - a ceramic artist - suggested to me once that my paintings had uninteresting names... names like, " Two Figures and a Yellow Book, Old Man, Lonely Old Man, etc. " So I started giving my art more fantastic names. Overall the reaction has been great, and I am glad I did it. The name of a work is part of the work, just as a person's name is part of who he is, and even helps define that person. A more unusual name also alters the way a person views a work of art. " Gray Buildings " vs. " The Last Memento from a Torrid Love Affair " evoke radically different thoughts when looking at the work itself. In my experience the unusual name helps the viewer engage with the art more. So I think a lot of thought go into a name - it shouldn't be chosen off the cuff.

I will be having a show of my work at S t. Matthew's Anglican Church in Weaverville (Asheville), NC from October 15th - November 15th. The show will feature some of my recent sacred art. The real special thing about this show, however, is that it is a "three priest" art show! It is a triple bill of my work, the work of Fr. Johann Vanderbijl , and Fr. Paul Blankenship , SSC. A portion of the proceeds will go to help Anglican mission parishes in India. Please come out and meet us at the opening, check out our art, and have a fun time of fellowship!

I sometimes forget that this blog is about life as an artist and priest, so I hardly comment on church matters here. But that has to change if I want to stay true to the theme of the blog. An interesting book I am reading now - just for "fun" - is Anglo-Catholicism: A Study in Religious Ambiguity. The author, WSF Pickering, is a sociologist and priest of the English Church. It examines the Anglo-Catholic movement with particular attention to the ambiguities that characterize it, such as how a church (the CofE) which described or understood itself as protestant for several centuries later was asserted to be truly catholic. It examines other themes as well, such as the ever interesting topic of the homosexual subculture that characterized anglo-catholicism, as well as the idea of there being several valid ways of being "catholic" in the anglo-catholic world. I'd be the first to admit that these ambiguities exist, but the reality is that similar ambiguities exist i...

An excellent article in the Wall Street Journal about art ownership, preservation, and the conflicts that can arise between the artist and the purchaser of art. I think these sorts of conflicts affect those whose art is more in the realm of "untraditional" - i.e. installation artists, sculptors who employ lots of found object, and so on. But even straight painters deal with this stuff from time to time. Having had at least one mural destroyed (I will never paint another mural again, by the way), I can sympathize with some of the concerns in this article. It can happen to anyone, including great and famous artists (such as Diego Rivera, for example).

We artists have to be excellent time managers, mainly because most of us pursue our craft as a side job. After working at the "day job", most people go home and veg out. But the artist can do no such thing. He must work on his a little bit craft every day, so he has to come up with a strict schedule and routine to make this happen. This is the case with all serious artists I think. Andy Warhol was known for following a very rigid daily schedule and working well into early evening. As responsibilities multiply, the need for making and following a schedule, and thinking through the artistic process, becomes even more critical. The ultimate game-changer as far as scheduling goes is having children. We just had our first child and this throws a wrench - a good one! - in everything. Something similar happened when I got married and lost my art studio in Baltimore City a number of years ago. I could not paint in oils in our small apartment, so that was when I got into egg tempera ...

While I appreciate the rediscovery and appreciation of traditional forms and approaches to art that are out there today with regard to sacred art I am somewhat troubled by the underlying message of some of the proponents of this type of art: namely that neo-Baroque, or neo-classical art and techniques are the best, and that anything modern or abstract is somehow lacking or unsuitable for sacred applications. Some of the greatest sacred art in the western world is in fact very abstract... abstract in the sense of not being representational but not realistic. The flat picture plane of many a painting by Fra Angelico, and the strange perspective of the works of Duccio have much in common stylistically with 20th century masters such as Ben Shahn. Those who think that traditional liturgical or sacred art must be neo-Baroque or neo-Classical are mistaken. The reality is that "modern" art can be used in any liturgical context and blend right in, as in this video of a Carmelite Mass ...