mark alan anderson

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I am a painter and sketcher, a writer, a teacher - but mostly, I'm an explorer. I'm curious about the world we live in, the ways we choose to live, and the various places we call home. I'm interested, too, in the marks we make and leave on the world: the structures we build, the fields we plow, the trees we plant. Thinking of it in those terms, mark-making is not the exclusive domain of the artist. The marks I make on paper or board intrigue me though: the energy of the initial strokes of a pen, the interpretation of loosely sketched marks as a sort of fresh shorthand for bigger, broader narratives. In my sketches they are, if you will, a conversation, only part of which we may be privy to. Gestural marks communicate more through simplicity than can be told by great detail.

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In a sense, we're all making marks, most of which are scrawled upon the world and the people around us. I treasure those marks, those small moments and interactions, the everyday ordinary, and the overlooked. I choose to pause for a moment to observe these encounters, in search of a story fragment that is there to be discovered if we but watch for it.