Field Notes, a SPOTLIGHT exhibition of new paintings by Fred Anderson, opens June 18th at Groveland Gallery. For nearly thirty years, Anderson has worked in the plein air tradition, travelling the back roads and neighborhood lanes of rural and small town Minnesota near his home in Cambridge. His long and intimate relationship with the Minnesota landscape is reflected in the sense of familiarity in his work.

Over the past two years, Anderson set aside his oil paints in favor of exploring a new medium – gouache on paper. The immediacy of the medium allows him to quickly depict places that populate his everyday life. Taken as a group, this exhibition acts as a painter’s journal, a record of memorable encounters with light, composition, and landscape. Armed with a sketchbook and a palette of quick-drying gouache paint, he begins and finishes his paintings on site. Anderson says his choice in subject matter is “almost unconscious.” He explains: “I usually catch a pattern of lights and darks out of the corner of my eye that appeals to me, and then I try to paint it. Hopefully my paintings are an honest and simple response to the beauty I see in the world.”