Just Add Water – paintings by Benjamin Anderson

Anderson Art Collective Opens Benjamin Anderson Show ‘Just Add Water’

Santa Barbara, CA – Anderson Art Collective will soon be awash with Benjamin Anderson’s vibrant, large-scale contemporary oil paintings depicting a universe where water immerses and transforms the world we know. The solo show, Just Add Water, opens on Saturday, February 27 with an artist reception from 6-9pm and will continue through May 9. The reception is free and open to the public.

In a series of 14 paintings that blend themes of beauty, war and materialism, Anderson uses water as his visual vehicle. Diluting and distorting the lines of perception and beauty, the artist utilizes both realism and abstraction in his vision to relegate the importance of the material world to simple forms and shapes. Finding beauty in the ugly and ugly in the beautiful, the concept of Just Add Water takes on a new meaning in this show of thought provoking paintings.

According to a review by art critic Josef Woodard in the Santa Barbara News Press, “Objects and people submerged in rippling pool water, from a group of girls to an underwater spitfire airplane, serve as irony-soaked subjects in the pleasantly disorienting paintings of Benjamin Anderson.”

Trained in Florence, Italy and the SF Academy of Art University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Benjamin’s work was first presented in the De Young Museum of Fine Arts “Emerging Artists Exhibition” of 2001. He has been creating monumental oil paintings since 2002 and has been recognized for his portraiture by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. He was selected by Converse for a national ad campaign as their All Star artist and his work was the subject of a presentation on London’s Channel 4 TV. He has shown work in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Italy and most recently in Santa Barbara, California. In addition to his collaboration on the M-E-Y-K Art Kits, he is also a co-owner and co-curator of Anderson ART Collective.

The Anderson ART Collective shows on the 2010 Santa Barbara Art Calendar will each contribute a percentage of sales to non-profit organizations. In 2009, the gallery donated to Unity Shoppe Santa Barbara, United Way, Surfrider Foundation, Talhado Childrens Home of South Africa and the Rio Beni Health Foundation of Bolivia.

The next show is Rogue Wave II which will open on May 29, 2010 presenting surf related contemporary artwork by local, national and international artists.

Anderson ART Collective is located at 410 Palm Avenue, A2, in Carpinteria, CA in the historic Henry Fish Seed Company building at the entrance to Carpinteria State Beach and is open Friday, Saturday and Sunday from noon until 5pm or by appointment. The gallery features contemporary artwork by local and international artists and is a platform to promote the arts, to protect the environment and to support human rights. For more information go to www.andersonARTcollective.com or call 805.684.8783.

Gov’t Issue asks Benjamin Anderson what he’s been listening to lately:

Music…hmm: Death from above 1979, Mylo, Cut Copy, Chromeo, Hot Chip, Planet Funk, Rhibosome, DJ Kicks, Solesides (greatest bumps-track 11). We use most of these for our art walls we put on for the public. We play it loud & people start dancing and making art.

Awesome.

Website:
http://www.benjaminanderson.com/

Email
info@benjaminanderson.com