Theresa Anderson has followed a roundabout path, but she is finally finding her footing as an artist.
After devoting time to her family and other pursuits, she has at last taken her longtime interest in art seriously, earning a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Colorado at Denver in 2007.
Anderson, 42, might not fit the typical 20-something model of a recent graduate, but she is quickly distinguishing herself as one of the region's most promising emerging artists.
She is featured in her first post-student solo exhibition in Denver, with a group of primarily paintings on view through Dec. 27 at Pirate: Contemporary Art, a respected cooperative she recently joined.
Elsewhere, she has a painting in a rotational exhibition at the new Saatchi Gallery in London, and earlier this year, her work was chosen for two shows in Chicago, including "Feminist Interrogations" at the ARC Gallery.
The provocative pieces at Pirate, part of a continuing series titled, "stickywater," operate in an ambiguous realm where fragments of reality, dreams and memories uneasily conflate.
The imagery, always rendered in a muted palette of light blue, gray and tan, can be distant and even discomfiting, but it never fails to intrigue.
"This work is all about gossiping, blabbing too much, talking, talking about oneself. Putting all your crap out there for the world can feel very empowering, you are flying," she writes in an accompanying statement.
"The problem with flying is the landing. How can I safely land this crazy aircraft? I always feel like I am wearing waxed-on wings and flying too close to the sun."
In the largest painting in the exhibition, a diptych composed of 4-by-5-foot canvases, a group of perhaps religious figures from the distant past, some on foot, others on horses or donkeys, populate the foreground. One is about to throw a rock.
Running through the rest of the painting is a late 1950s pickup, a billboard and a couple of buildings along East Colfax Avenue, including a well-known faux-windmill structure that probably once served as the office for a motel.
What does this sprawling composition with its curious mix of elements from past and present mean? It is impossible to know for sure.
Like all of Anderson's long, seemingly nonsensical titles, which are excerpted from stream-of-consciousness jottings in her journal, the one for this work offers little help: "Did Absalom's beauty lure you as well? St. Anthony's temptation was like a fragile onion."
Striking out in a different direction is "Dreamside/chasing bunnies and 'teleyvision,'" a 4-by-5-foot painting on linen, combining charcoal, gesso, watercolor, pencil and acrylic.
This semi-comical composition combines a man wearing a rabbit- ears antenna over his face like a mask, a row of 10 rabbits in suits and a nearly horizontal nude woman, her arms and legs extended, as though she were jumping into a pool.
Anderson's free-wheeling painting style, with its loose applications of paint, washes of unmodulated color and abundance of gracefully choreographed yet natural-seeming drips, is as engaging as her subject matter.
In works such as "Absalom's beauty," she deliberately leaves portions of the composition unfinished, allowing the central elements to fade into a kind of void, creating an effective contrast of negative and positive space.
Her most technically assured work is "Five Daredevil Stunts. How much higher will they go? A priest criticizes his church. Are you complicit in the wink?" Her blue shadings in the big, hooped dress and the drips flowing through the white mid-section are nothing short of virtuosic.
Where Anderson's artistic career is headed remains unclear. But with solo exhibitions scheduled in 2010 at the Ironton and Ice Cube galleries, expect to see a lot more of her work.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14012366#ixzz0a3AmncTj
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