Status Updates From The Art of Walter Anderson

Drawing rapidly as he read ... he made ninety-nine drawings of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' alone, and over two thousand of Cervantes' 'Don Quixote.' ... For him, reading was a process of visualization, during which he "realized" scenes latent in the text.

"A Canadian whose work comes close to Anderson's in the depiction of the passionate, evocative freedom of some of her native British Columbia wildernesses is Emily Carr. Her work too is steeped in a sense of fierce communion with nature, she seemingly hearing as well as seeing the eerie, daringly discovered depths of the forest primeval." (No wonder I was drawn to Carr's works when I saw them in Victoria.)

"When considering a nature-oriented sensibility like Anderson's and Burchfield's, do we presume direct influences between artists or similar awarenesses of natural phenomena? It is best to suggest possible influences while at the same time not underestimating the possibility of independent perceptions of the same realities under the earth, upon it, and above it."