J. Gordon Anderson - Contemporary Art

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...

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...