Honoring the “click”
Luke Anderson, Terroir, oil, 24 x 24.
When things finally click into place, a whole new world can open up, as Luke Anderson can attest. “I didn’t realize the impact that growing up in Cheyenne, WY, and road tripping around the West had on me,” he reveals. “Once I was an adult and discovered that western landscape art was a genre unto itself, things that I had seen in my childhood began to click. I had been to a lot of the places that I was seeing in paintings, and I had felt similar things to what some of the artwork I admired was portraying. That’s when I realized it was a direction I could take my own art.”
- Luke Anderson, Other Worlds, oil, 18 x 18.
- Luke Anderson, Dormancy, oil, 20 x 20.
- Luke Anderson, Wildfire Season, oil, 12 x 12.
And he has, putting his intellectual spin of realism, abstract expressionism, and pop art on the western landscape and those who inhabit it. “I’ve had such a broad range of influences,” Anderson says, “from comic strips to an obsession with the Impressionists and color and texture, to modernists and abstract expressionists, to graphic design and computer animation.” His paintings—based on interpretations of an actual locale or a mishmash of several different ones from reference photos and observation—feature layering and reductive techniques for depth and texture. And the organic circular shapes, as in RAINBOW OF CHAOS? “That design element creates interest in the otherwise flat, empty spaces to add a positive and negative force,” he notes.
- Luke Anderson, August Haze, oil, 30 x 30.
- Luke Anderson, Rainbow of Chaos, oil, 16 x 16.
- Luke Anderson, Promethean Sky, oil, 24 x 24.
For Anderson, it all works together to convey the complex interconnection between the landscape and its cultures, an appreciation that’s founded in both his identity and his education. He double-majored in American studies and environment and natural resources, with a focus on historic preservation, at the University of Wyoming, then spent a few years working in the historic preservation field before the “creative edge re-emerged and took hold.” His unique creative style garnered him a spot in the Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale and gallery representation within the past two years.
While a 2019 move to Salt Lake City, UT, has introduced him to new vistas, Anderson remains committed to interpreting all that came before. “I’ve shifted a bit to regional landscapes without any human or animal presence,” he says, “but I still like to paint everywhere I’ve lived or seen.” —Beth Williams
representation
Meyer Gallery, Park City, UT; Visions West Contemporary, Denver, CO, Bozeman, MT, and Livingston, MT; www.lukeandersonfineart.com.
This story appeared in the April/May 2022 issue of Southwest Art magazine.