For over a decade, the art of painter Chris Anderson has addressed the theme of American cultural traditions and life in the contemporary home and neighborhood.

Anderson studied visual art in Italy, at the Tyler School of Art in Rome, in New York at the Pratt Institute of Art, and in California, at Scripps College (BA, 1971) and the Claremont Graduate University (MFA, 1973).

The artist has received numerous awards and honors for her work, including fellowship grants from The National Endowment for the Arts (Painting), New York Foundation for the Arts (Painting), Artists Space (Artist's Grant), Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation (Painting), New York State Council on the Arts (CAPS Grant), and many research and scholarship awards, including several from The City University of New York and The Council for International Exchange of Scholars (Fulbright).

From 1996 to 2000, Anderson lived and worked as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in the Arts in Berlin. The Fulbright Commission awarded her a lecturing/research grant as the only visual artist among over a hundred grantees under its auspices in Germany in 1996-97 and a renewal in 1997-98 as the first grantee in five years to receive the Honorary Fulbright Senior Scholar Award. As a Fulbright Guest Professor she taught "Experimental Painting and Drawing" for graduate and undergraduate students at The Berlin University of the Arts. In Germany the artist created over three hundred paintings for solo exhibitions at Amerika Haus Berlin, the 10. Internationalen Kunstforum at Eichhofen Palace, the Max-Planck Institut, and Galerie Dorow im Kunsthof Berlin [catalogue].

Anderson has been the recipient of residency fellowship awards from foundations here and abroad: Yaddo, Austrian Chancellery of Art, Edward F. Albee Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, The MacDowell Colony, Deutsche Burgenvereinigung (German Castles Association, Marksburg Castle), Millay Colony, and the Fieldstead Company for work in Italy on "The Florence Portfolio", a body of prints now in the collections of the Vatican, the Armand Hammer Museum at UCLA, and over twenty university, corporate, and private collections. In 2003, she received an Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Center Award and in 2006, a renewal from the EFASC. Most recently, she was awarded a grant from the Fieldstead Foundation for work in Austria, England, and Scotland.

She has lectured as a guest artist for numerous art institutions, including the Columbia University Graduate Department of Art, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of New Mexico Albuquerque, Smith College, University of Notre Dame (Pew Charitable Trust/CIVA Graduate Symposium), Fine Arts Academy of Nuremberg, Germany — and she has taught studio art on the faculties of Skidmore College, The University of Maryland, Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute of Art Manhattan, Regent College in Vancouver, Canada, and Gordon College in Orvieto, Italy, among others.

The work of Chris Anderson has been shown extensively here and abroad and may be found in over fifty public and corporate collections. A selective list of exhibitions would include the following: The Art Institute of Chicago; Kebble-Villa Museum, Germany; American Embassy, Moscow; Bilbao International Exhibition Centre, Spain; Muscarelle Museum of Art; Butler Institute; The Washington Gallery; Exit Art; Artists Space; The Society of the Four Arts of Palm Beach; Laguna Beach Museum; and The Rockefeller Arts Center; and Istitito San Lodovico in Palazzo Ranieri, Orvieto, Italy.

Selections from the artist's "Family Stories Series" were shown in 2003 at Phillips' Pury & Luxemburg Galleries in Chelsea in "On and Off the Wall", the New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellows' Exhibition curated by William Stover of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Her work was also shown at the Sato Museum in Tokyo, Japan, in "Considering Peace", a group exhibition sponsored by the International Arts Movement to benefit UNESCO. In July 2004, a solo exhibition of Chris' new work was held at Schloss Mittersill in Austria. In 2005, Chris was curated into the Corcoran Gallery of Art's benefit exhibition, "Select III, Washington Project for the Arts," in Washington, DC. With work created in residence at The Wayfarer's Trust in Freswick Castle, Caithness, Scotland, she opened two solo exhibitions, "At the Back of the North Wind," at The Faculty School of Music, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, and Catherine College, University of Oxford, Oxford, England. In 2006 and 2007, Chris exhibited in solo shows of "Family Stories" at Wexler Gallery, Philadelphia; "Timepieces" at Bellevue Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, and invitational shows at Regent College, Vancouver, and Schloss Mittersill, Mittersill, Austria. Most recently, she has been invited to participate in the Schwandorf Exchange Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition, sponsored by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Regensburg, Germany, in 2008.

Chris now lives in Lower Manhattan and works in her studio at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York City's Garment District.

BACK TO TOP