Linda Anderson
Linda Anderson (born September 3, 1941) is an American, self-taught folk artist who began painting when she was 40 years old. According to NPR, she is considered "one of the foremost living memory painters."
Linda Anderson
Annmarie.Anderson · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Name
- Linda Anderson
- Born
- 3 September 1941
- Birthplace
- Floyd County, Georgia
- Known for
- Folk art
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- painter
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In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Linda Anderson • Born — 3 September 1941 • Birthplace — Floyd County, Georgia • Known for — Folk art
Early life
Early life
Anderson was born September 3, 1941, in Floyd County, Georgia. She grew up poor in Clarkesville, Georgia in a tenant farmer family with four siblings. "Everybody worked. If you were able, you worked. I picked beans, pulled corn. I got my first rifle at 10. I shot rabbit and squirrel for our dinner." After her father died while she was in her teens, the family was forced to move to "a house with a dirt floor and no indoor plumbing"; she quit school and worked as a maid and a nurse's aide to help. Previous to taking up painting she was a quilter. She was married and working as a nurse when she took up painting in 1980, at age 40, during a time she was caring for her sick daughter.
Discovery
Discovery
In 1981 Anderson took her work to an art fair in Homer, Georgia. Atlanta collector Carolyn Caswell, impressed with the work, introduced Anderson to Judith Alexander, a gallery owner and folk art expert.
Exhibitions
Exhibitions
Anderson's first gallery show was in 1982, arranged by Alexander. Anderson has exhibited her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, the Asheville Art Museum in North Carolina, the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH among other venues. In 2004 she had a retrospective show at the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia.
Style
Style
Anderson is known for her memory paintings. Common subjects are vignettes from her childhood growing up in rural Georgia in the 1940s and 1950s, biblical subject matter, animals, and portraits of celebrities. In addition to her paintings, she creates with oil crayons on fine-grain sandpaper representations of the auditory-visual synaesthesia she experiences during severe migraine attacks. Anderson also whittles and makes glass beads.
Publications
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Collections
Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the High Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Linda Anderson (artist), revision 1301107294 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Linda Anderson. Museum of Contemporary Art.
- 2.Linda Anderson - Folk Artist and Memory Painter. Georgia Public Broadcasting. 28 May 2008.
- 3.Fox, Catherine. Painter merges nostalgia, 'edginess'. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. K.1. 28 December 2003.
- 4.Linda Anderson - Mother and Child. Whitney Museum of American Art.
- 5.The Banishment from the Garden of Eden. High Museum of Art.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 2
- Gimenez, Patricia. "I'm Holding the Brush": Myth and Memory in the Paintings of Linda Anderson. Kent State University. 2010.
- Anderson, Linda. Flashes of memory: paintings by self-taught artist Linda Anderson, March 23 to April 19, 2001. Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College. 2001. 47212972.
References
Citations
References
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reference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 25 August 2026.
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