Beth Anderson
 The one constant in my life as I was growing up was my love of drawing. As a teenager I made watercolor fashion sketches, which lead to a scholarship to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. After graduating I designed children’s clothes in NYC, then moved to San Francisco and designed sports clothes for Arnelle of California. In 2000-2002, I took oil painting classes at the SRJC, until my teacher, Michael Loffredo, declared I was no longer just a student and just needed to keep painting. He believed no one is an artist until they have made at least 100 paintings. Mysteriously, about the time I moved to Occidental in 1999, spontaneously I began to work abstractly. I also began to bicycle around the county at this time, and began thinking about what I was seeing and being dissatisfied with the idea that a landscape was a small idealized section of nature. But how to represent what is hidden below the soil, and the energy of what is constantly growing and changing, and one’s emotions of gratitude for being part of this landscape? An impossible task, perhaps, but maybe from time to time, just a hint may appear in a painting as I pass the 100 paintings mark. I am greatly inspired by traveling, mostly in Europe, but also, a year ago, in Mexico. |