The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson

by Walter Inglis Anderson, Redding S. Sugg Jr.

A revelation of the art and mind of a unique artist lost and alone in the world of nature, this beautiful book records Anderson's experiences on one of the barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico over a period of twenty years. Revised edition.

Genres: Art

240 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1981

About the author

Walter Inglis Anderson was born in 1903 in New Orleans ... His mother’s love of art, music, and literature strongly influenced Walter ... and his two brothers, Peter and Mac. Anderson was educated at a private boarding school, then attended the Parsons Institute of Design in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where his drawings earned him a scholarship for study abroad. He traveled through Europe and was particularly impressed with the cave art he saw at Les Eyzies in France. His wide-ranging interests included extensive reading of poetry, history, natural science and art history. He was an life-long learner, searching for meaning in books of folklore, mythology, philosophy, and epics of voyage and discovery.

Anderson returned to Ocean Springs and married a Radcliffe graduate, Agnes (Sissy) Grinstead, started a family, and went to work creating molds and decorating earthenware at Shearwater Pottery, founded by his brother Peter. Anderson felt that an artist should create affordable work that brought pleasure to others, and in return, the artist should be able to pursue his artistic passions. In the 1930s, he worked on regional Works Progress Administration mural projects and began to view his role in art as a muralist.

In the late 1930s Anderson first succumbed to mental illness. He was diagnosed with profound depression and spent three years in and out of hospitals. Following his hospitalizations, Anderson joined his wife and small children at her father’s antebellum home in Gautier, Mississippi. The pastoral tranquility of the plantation, called Oldfields, provided an ideal setting for recuperation. During this period he rendered thousands of disciplined and compelling works of art which reflected his training, intellect, and extraordinary grasp of the history of art.

In 1947, with the understanding of his family, Anderson left his wife and children and embarked on a private and very solitary existence. He lived alone in a cottage on the Shearwater compound, and increased his visits to Horn Island, one of a group of barrier islands along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, rowing the 12 miles in a small skiff, carrying minimal necessities and his art supplies. Anderson spent long periods of time on this uninhabited island over the last 18 years of his life. There he lived primitively, working in the open and sleeping under his boat, sometimes for weeks at a time.

He endured extreme weather conditions, from blistering summers to hurricane winds and freezing winters. He painted and drew a multitude of species of island vegetation, animals, birds, and insects, penetrating the wild thickets on hands and knees and lying in lagoons in his search to record his beloved island paradise. Anderson’s obsession to “realize” his subjects through his art, to be one with the natural world instead of an intruder, created works that are intense and evocative.
Walter Anderson died at the age of 62 in a New Orleans hospital of lung cancer. Much of the work survived only by chance; it was discovered in drifts, like autumn leaves, throughout his cottage after his death. Those found treasures present the viewer today with a fascinating opportunity to share Anderson’s vision.

http://www.walterandersonmuseum.org/i...

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter Anderson spent a remarkable part of twenty years living on the barrier islands off the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Increasingly, time on the mainland seemed to trigger episodes of mental illness, an illness that only seemed to be soothed when he was away from people (sadly, that included his understanding, long-suffering wife and children) and communing instead with the flora and fauna of Horn Island especially. And commune he did, to a fullest extent of the word, making progresses (as he called them) to stalk and spy on especially the birds -- herons, bitterns, ducks -- in their habitats; to draw them while he sometimes stood in water up to his elbows; to wait -- for what he thought was most thrilling -- to feel their eyes upon him.

Eventually, it seemed as if much of the fauna had accepted him as a part of the island: mosquito hawks alighting on his bare toe; hungry birds, rabbits, and raccoons approaching his camp (his bed was his overturned boat) to eat his rice. Food is scarce on the island; and when tons of bananas from a barge wash up on the shore, he details which animals will eat the unfamiliar fruit and at what stage of ripeness.

His only enemies were the gnats, mosquitoes, and red ants, which he killed with no remorse. But when any injured turtles or birds or even baby rats were killed by his unintentional negligence, I sensed confession and grief in his account. Several times he almost steps on a cottonmouth, something always serendipitously stopping him at the crucial moment. The last entries concern his time on Horn Island during a hurricane (Hurricane Betsy) and the changes effected by the storm are poignant and powerful, a sobering yet thrilling coda to what has come before.

Despite some mundane entries and repetition here and there, his time on Horn Island is recorded with an artist's eye, of course, and sometimes even with literary references. Whether Anderson was writing these for himself or posterity (not likely), it is amazing to me that, along with the watercolors he painted there, the pages he wrote upon survived the elements, including the sometimes flooding of his old boat as he traveled along different routes (depending on the season and the weather) between the town of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and his beloved Horn Island.

*

Near the end of Anderson's time on Horn Island, he writes quite a bit of the pelicans he finally sees, so I will leave you with a woodblock of his, a colored print of which I hang every Christmas season.

[Pabgo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply fascinating! Beautiful renderings populate this magnificent journal of one of my favorite artists. Unlike anything I have read before. A lifetime adventure story of one man embedded in nature, documenting it all in line drawings and watercolor paintings. A barrier island version of Thoreau's Waldon, more documentarian than philosophical, without even a permanent structure to weather a hurricane in. Just an amazing experience!

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned that Anderson was also a competent writer after completing this book. Well worth reading for any Mississippian.

[Annette]

Actually the editor is Redding S. Sugg, Jr.

Such beautiful, fantastic stuff! Walter Anderson would row from Ocean Springs to Horn Island and live there, painting, drawing, writing, sometimes holing up under his overturned boat, sometimes caging animals so he could draw them and then having to bury them after these wild critters died in captivity.

Daily entries record where he walked and swam and crawled, what he saw, what he ate, the occasional conversations and encounters with people

I'm thankful to Marie, Ree's daughter, and Nanny (Ann) Ford for teaching us about Walter Anderson.

[Mary Couillard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter Anderson is the Thoreau of Horn Island Mississippi. This book is his journal of painting and drawing nature in that location off and on for years. You get introduced to much of the fauna and flora. So now when you view his paintings you know these “characters “ like old friends. You also know what he went through to render the paintings and get insight into this eccentric iconic watercolorist.

[Mary Nell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating artist.