Today we’d like to introduce you to Paige Anderson.
Hi Paige, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I began painting patterns in college. I was trying to find a visual language to express ideas surrounding genealogy. The loss of a family and the reclaiming of those individuals through genealogical research.
I was also inspired by the accompanying ideas that I found as I pondered the significance of family history and the “whys” surrounding it–ideas like inheritance, succession, duty, and identity to name a few. I settled on patterns after iterating with other repeated forms (like chairs: they are people-like in that they also have arms, legs, seats, backs…but using an object leads critiques to often center around “who does this chair represent?” and I wanted the paintings to be about the broader, overarching themes, not necessarily the individuals in my family line).
As I was preparing for my BFA exhibition, I was also pregnant with my first daughter. The show was hung in December, and she was born about 2 months later. It was around this time that we also found out we’d be moving abroad for my husband’s graduate school program. I didn’t know how much painting I’d be doing. I was happy in the new-mother haze and preparing for an international move. Once there I was immersed in learning a new language and figuring out how to run a house in a place where I didn’t have a car, didn’t know how to communicate well, and didn’t know a soul.
We loved living in Bologna, Italy. It was a beautiful place to learn how to be together and rely on one another. We quickly found ourselves in a good groove there and soon I was again itching to paint. With my show out of the way, I could paint anything.
And I was in Italy! What better place to get inspired? I painted some city scenes, a landscape or two, but what surprised me was how I kept coming back to repeated forms: rows of windows, brick patterns, clothes on a line…I found I was still drawn to painting patterns and began to understand the power of repetition. I was also dealing with the absolute mundanity of mothering. Folding clothes. Washing dishes. Feed, diaper, nap, repeat. For someone who was always an “achiever,” I sometimes felt a bit mired in the routine of it all.
This all brought me back to painting patterns again in earnest about a year later. I began to understand that the constant stacking of small tasks is what builds a life. We get moments–glimpses–of something beyond the now from time to time, where we experience pure joy, or see true beauty, or feel divine presence. But much of life is the daily toothbrushing, dishwasher loading, and getting the mail type of stuff. Painting patterns has allowed me to be okay with that and understand its worth.
Fast forward another year and we were back in Utah in 2013. I had my second daughter weeks after moving to Salt Lake and began a consistent studio practice of working every day. By the Winter I had reached out to Susan Meyer at Meyer Gallery and began representation with them. They have been wonderful partners as I have grown and my pieces have grown in scale and numbers. I feel very lucky to be where I am with them.
Last year I was given the honor of receiving the Governor’s Mansion Artist Award. When I received this award I was told that it was atypical to go to a young mother. I’m not sure if anyone else showed up to the mansion with a couple of kids in tow, one in pajamas and one in a princess dress, but I was truly honored to be recognized in this phase of my life.
A phase that is demanding and fleeting in every sense. I felt a bit like the women like me throughout the state were also being recognized for the tireless service they provide. I believe that women are the beating heart of our state. Women, especially, are daily involved with the care of children, checking in on neighbors, on the elderly, volunteering in schools, consoling a friend, and taking a meal to the sick…in short, the many small, daily, often overlooked acts that do the work of weaving the fabric of our communities.
Similar to my work, these activities are repetitive, they aren’t especially glamorous and they’re sometimes menial. The word menial, I learned, derives from the Latin word meaning “to remain” or “to dwell in a household.” It is a word of connections and relationships and being present. In my work, quilt patterns serve as a beautiful thematic stand-in for ideas relating to menial, quotidian tasks, women’s work, to the stitch-by-stitch nature of building the things in our lives that are lasting and worthwhile.
I’m a believer in the accumulation of many small things. Acts of kindness, of bridging, of lifting the lives around us, often feel small and sometimes that smallness can be defeating. But I hope my work serves as a visual reminder that these small things stack up to create repeated miracles. These things are what sew and bind a community together.
Now, I participate in several shows a year and make as much art as I can while raising 4 daughters. We’re definitely in the thick of it, as people say!
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The biggest challenge for me has always been the balance of my home life and my studio practice.
When I have to hustle and ramp up my studio time leading up to a show, I can see the direct effect on my family (laundry piles up, kids aren’t getting read to at night, dinners are quick and my temper is short). It’s not always pretty. But I always come out the other side grateful that my girls are getting to watch their mom try and be a woman with many facets, and also see that it isn’t easy all the time.
I always toy with the idea of taking a year off or slowing down, but I have a hard time saying no to things, AND mostly, I know that when I am not creating, other areas of my life suffer as well. I have an innate drive to make. And one of the things I love making most are paintings.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I painted quilt patterns, which when I started, I didn’t know anyone who was doing that. I paint in several layers of different colored paint and then take a power sander to my painting and reveal the texture and colors from the underlying layers. I repeat this cycle several times to complete a work. It is tedious. Maybe no one paints this way because it can be boring to paint 20,000 triangles several times over. But for me, it’s a meditative process.
It reflects what I see in the quotidian parts of life. And the reveal is also a reflection of life. We only get to build on what we have done. We can try to sand away some of our rough edges, but the foundational parts of us will always inform what comes next. I love thinking of my paintings as a metaphor for a life well lived. A constant refinement. And a contentment with the variety of color, texture, and experience that has brought a person to their present moment.
How do you define success?
My most successful professional moments have come when I have had something I’ve wanted to say, a conversation I’ve wanted to start, and I make a work that does that.
When I see collectors and viewers taking the visual seeds I’ve given them and allowing their fruit to follow–there are few things better.
Contact Info:
- Website: paigeandersonart.com
- Instagram: @paigecanderson
