CURRENT EXHIBIT
at The Art Gallery at City Hall
The Art of James Anderson:
Vacations and Abstracts
If you would like to purchase any of the art in this exhibit, please contact us.
Artist Statement
JAMES ANDERSON
I always enjoyed capturing photos and creating art from my youth. Sculpture, drawing, acrylics, and watercolors were my favorite ways of expressing my creative side. I received a prestigious L. S. Ayres Gold Key for one of my watercolor cityscape works in high school and enjoyed working with bright colors. I never understood what was so special about that one watercolor until nearly fifty years later when I saw the Matisse exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. That one work I created was very Matisse-like.
However, during my physical for college, I discovered that I was red-green-brown shade colorblind. It is not that I don’t see those colors but I have trouble distinguishing between them in certain lighting situations. I always wondered why it was difficult for me to blend colors to achieve a desired color when painting with acrylics. Therefore, my wife has become my color advisor.
While God has richly blessed me through the years, I set aside the artistic talents He gave me in exchange for an excellent career as a programmer analyst/network engineer/business analyst/systems test engineer/systems trainer/systems support engineer in Information Technology. Shortly before retirement, God opened my eyes again to those dormant artistic talents as He showed me what I missed during my IT career. He brought artist friends back into my life who urged me to display the scenes I captured for others to view as well. Buffalo Creek flows beside our home and we keep the banks mostly natural. In the spring of 2013, God reminded me that the middle portion of the bank was overgrown. I agreed and began “trimming” the overgrowth. For some reason, He wouldn’t let me stop trimming. Four and a half hours of “trimming” later opened an amazing view into the middle of the creek with scenes I had missed for thirty-four years. He led me to see His creation there almost daily as the seasons transformed the scenes. While He has taken me to cityscapes, landscapes, quiet nature scenes, flowers, people, and animals everywhere, my favorite creation of His are the natural abstracts I find in Buffalo Creek. These are what I am sharing with you in this exhibition.
Over the years, the cameras I use have changed but one thing has not and that is the lens maker. I use Sony and Zeiss lenses exclusively as they have made the finest optics in the world for many decades. My late stepfather introduced me to their quality when I was a teen. Since then, my late mom, my wife, our daughter, and I have all used these lenses with superb results. The detail these lenses provide is unmatched in my opinion. Currently, my camera is a Sony @7rIV. Its wide variety of capabilities fit my needs well from macro to zoomed telephoto. However, with all its many options, it is the Sony FE70300G/OSS optics that put the icing on each shot.
Now I use all the gifts God gave me from the creativeness of high school art, to the logic of IT, combined with the eyes of age and memories to capture scenes that I hope others enjoy as much as I enjoy them. He has given me a portfolio of over 4200 photos. I have the portfolio available with me always to display on a variety of tablets from 12 to 21 inch width depending upon the needs of the individual viewer. I am blessed to share these creations with you at the Nickel Plate Arts Gallery during September. I am in the Indiana Photographic Society exhibition at Holliday Park in November. The weekend before Thanksgiving I have a booth at the Garfield Park Autumn Art Show.
Facebook Live Interview with James Anderson
August 14, 2020 at 6:30pm