Fred Anderson is a Minnesota native who currently lives and works in Cambridge, Minnesota. A predominantly self-educated artist, Anderson has been painting since the mid-1980s.
Anderson travels throughout East Central Minnesota in a car, which he has dubbed his “mobile atelier.” He uses the car as a studio and observation point. He begins and finishes each painting on location, usually returning over several days to the same site. His small, precise landscapes can be seen as descriptive portraits of a specific time and place. There is a quiet intimacy in his paintings that reveals his long and familiar relationship with the Minnesota landscape. Anderson’s work is included in numerous Minnesota private and corporate collections including General Mills, Securian and Anderson Windows. Anderson was the recipient of a 2008 McKnight Artist Fellowship grant from the East Central Arts Council.
Artist Statement:
All of my landscape paintings are done on site outdoors, except in winter when I paint in my car. My interiors and still lifes are painted from life, too. The selection of subjects is almost unconscious. 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 landscape.