We’ve featured so many artists, it’s really hard to keep track of all them all, let alone put names to particular pieces of work. That’s not to say any of our past, present or future features aren’t special, but there’s simply too much to remember. Just when you thought there were no exciting artists left on the face of the earth, Fecal Face, unveiled an interview with Scot Anderson, who had this to say about his career and development as an artist: “the way these paintings look has been evolving gradually over the past few years, but I would say the epiphany came my last year of graduate school. The pressure had been building, I guess over all the years of art school. Course work had improved my facilities, taught me some art history, and exposed me to contemporary art. I spent the first bit of grad school frustrated, and wasn’t sure how to apply all of this or how to insert myself into the canon. It wasn’t until I stopped worrying about defending/defining my work in post-structuralist terms, that I relaxed and was honest and really invested in what I was doing. It was weird. I felt like I was kind of regressing, by clustering images and what not together in a manner that I would have “fooling around” in my high school sketchbook. It was more sophisticated though. The “doodling” I was doing in the paintings was being informed by all this stuff I had absorbed – by the narrative of art history.”
Anderson goes on to say: “like a lot of dudes my age, much of the pop culture consumed in our formative years were science fiction, so there is no doubt that it’s been a component in a lot of my work, both deliberately and subconsciously. I think it’s particularly apt when describing my work a few years ago, and maybe less so now. What I think influences me more than science fiction is medieval painting. I’ve always been attracted to the epic narratives, symbolism, and generosity of detail. I like it that academics have devoted their careers to decoding the paintings and that these things are timeless, eternally interesting objects. They are always an occasion for new meanings even if they had a very specific function during the time of their making. This is how I want my work to operate and I think a lot of contemporary art does not.” The bottom line is that it’s spectacular to get lost in! Be sure to check out the entire interview and take a look at some more examples of his unique work.
