Doug Anderson | 2020 Art Instructor Show

Doug Anderson is a featured artist in The Art Instructor Show, a virtual gallery featuring artwork created by Pacific’s talented art & design faculty.

I am using rocks and the debris that collects in the swash of the beaches along the Pacific Northwest Coast as metaphors to explore questions related to power, integration, acceptance, and control. Rocks often symbolize stability and resistance, and here they might also suggest cultural values. They are resistant to change, but shaped over time by various forces.

I am using the elements of art to explore the balance between expressing our individuality and recognizing the need for conformity. Sometimes these rocks are encrusted with new organisms that penetrate and permanently alter their substrate. Sometimes the substrate dissolves away, leaving no purchase on which to cling and sometimes the new element is a reinforcing, protective covering, making the substrate stronger.

"Rocks often symbolize stability and resistance, and here they might also suggest cultural values."
—Doug Anderson

While the overt intention of my work is about aesthetics, the underlying content is about control. Who has the power? What provides the power? Who or what is the dominant influencer of power? Who or what needs to be controlled? How does personal expression co-exist with control?

Using the language and the tools of art, I am experimenting with the relationships between shape, color, line, texture, and tone to address these kinds of questions on an abstract level.

—Artist Statement, Doug Anderson