John David Anderson

Canadian Contemporary Impressionist

There is a joy in painting and learning to see with a new set of eyes from a point of view that goes well beyond mere object identification. I look to find compositions that provide an opportunity leading to an emotion-driven desire to paint a response. Building a composition from the elements of shape, value, and colour that engage the viewer with a light story. That is me.

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Canadian - because I am..., Contemporary - because I am alive, and an Impressionist - because you have a pretty good idea of what you might be looking at in my work....

There is a brush in my hand nearly every day.

Writer and painter, Frank Dunn, spoke of it as conversations in paint. Within me are ways of seeing which are mine although they are built upon many traditions from generations of artists and their practices long before me. Painting is a way for me to share the excitement of juicy paint presenting the dynamics of light on surfaces in a space both in subtleness and power. The subject can be anything. Charles Hawthorne, a noted New England painter of the 1920s, wrote that we have a duty to find beauty in the ordinary. I look for elements of beauty within anything that light touches. Pulling out of that light path, I compose a structure of large interactive shapes that are in themselves engaging, bringing the viewer into the space.

Through shifts of edge, value, and colour temperature and hue, a journey begins.

My work is evolving from an oil painter's perspective of brush on canvas. I use paint tonally applied with rich colour and an impressionist character. The subject does not drive composition, but the light movement does.