By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON January 7, 2012 You see him on the street from time to time; easel before him, fingerless gloves on his hands in the colder weather. Scott Thomas Anderson, a graduate of Central High in Burlington; graduate of Sheridan College and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Anderson added to that a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of Waterloo.
Anderson uses what is known as a plein-air approach to his art. Years of study and hundreds of art shows later Anderson can now make the time to walk the streets of the city and record what he sees in oil.
Anderson has done a dozen Juried Shows and came away with the Best of Show Award at two of them. We first saw Anderson while he was doing a painting of the Riviera Motel as the claws of an excavator were tearing down the walls of the building.
We next saw Anderson in front of the Queen’s Head where we were able to photograph him. So who is this young man who says he is “compelled to paint the landscape as it stands on the brink of change.”
Where will this piece of art go? Whose wall will it hang on and what story will it tell 25-50 years from now. With art – one just never knows – that’s why people collect it.
“Souvenirs” explains Anderson, “ represent dying values. My paintings are an attempt to collect the views overlooked by the majority, who prefer the topography of the future. Using the plein-air tradition that affords me an autonomous immediacy, in order to better experience the spatial relationships which the landscape reveals to my senses.”
“The architectural loose ends I depict are the ruins of a society, or the remains of the canon, which have been lost to the bustle of life without integrity.”
That’s a point of view – well thought out. What impressed me was the painting. Perhaps we will see Anderson in an exhibit at the Burlington Art Centre and hopefully as part of the Art in Action tour next fall. Anderson is an artist worth keeping an eye on.
These disappearing landmarks also often mark the disappearance of a way of life that’s no longer viable – indepenent businesses that supported hard-working families are replaced daily by characterless chain operations that answer only to their shareholders.