Brett Anderson
Brett Anderson
Brett Anderson is an Assistant Professor of printmaking at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville. Brett grew up in central Missouri, earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Missouri in 1999. He received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of South Dakota in 2002.
He has had solo exhibitions in Oregon, Arizona, California, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Missouri and participated in over 100 group exhibitions nationally over the past 10 years. Recently, Brett has been a visiting artist, leading workshops on relief printmaking techniques, at California State University, Stanislaus; at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC; and at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, in Odessa.
Like many others, I’m striving to anchor myself within the cacophony of popular American culture. As much as I’m addicted to 21st century conveniences, I have a curmudgeon’s distrust for touch-screen technologies, the 24-hour news cycle, and throwaway consumerism. I live with a superabundance of leisure activities, entertainment options, and empty calories when compared to most generations of human beings that have come before me. I question if any of these gifts make me a more fortunate person.
I work primarily with the antiquated processes of relief printmaking; ways of working that have a closer affinity to catapult construction instead of anything requiring a two-prong outlet. Drawing is central to my way of thinking as an artist. For me, engraving and carving are an honest extension of drawing. I see the use of color in the work as both a joyful formal exercise and saccharine flavoring to make the content more palatable.
Satire is an important element in my work, and the people most examined in its scrutiny are others like me, those with a saturated exposure to Saturday morning cartoons, that binge watch Sci-Fi, and mash buttons on game consoles. An interest in narrative allegory and mythic archetypes must compete with vernacular memes and cheesy clichés. Without trying to become too didactic, I hope the works strike a balance between the visually alluring and the morally ugly; popular culture and the highfalutin; the sacred and the profane.