|
|
|
|
IN MY HUMBLE OPINION Okie White FEATURED COLUMNIST Ray Collins FICTION |
When I first met Guy Anderson in 1959, he lived in a salvaged lighthouse oil storage shed about a half-mile west of the small town of LaConner, WA. LaConner is 65 miles north of Seattle on the edge of Puget Sound. With pure water, ample fertile soil, timber and fish it was a workingman and woman's paradise. After the trees and fish were destroyed the town propped up its sagging economy with quaint gift shoppes, boutiques, and coffee houses. "My, the town is getting very Mother Goosie", Guy would say. LaConner is in a creative vortex, and it attracted writers and artists. (Author Tom Robbins was Guy's friend and neighbor) The possibility of seasonal labor was attractive, too. Guy Anderson was one of the artists who was drawn there and the town became a lifelong love affair for him. He admired the men and women who worked in the fields and canneries, and the men who cut timber and put out to sea in small boats to catch salmon. Guy loved the Native Americans who lived across the channel on the Swinomish Reservation. A half-mile walk to town-- he liked to visit "the Club"; the LaConner Tavern, in the evening-- was an art education. Self-taught, and a prolific reader, Guy Anderson knew more art history and theory than most university professors and, as an artist, had the discerning eye of an eagle. He saw everything... "Just look at that Tintoretto sky", he would say, standing in the middle of the road while a pea truck bore down, "Isn't it marvelous?" Half way to town Guy would study an out-cropping of rocks. Later, when he became one of America's most important painters, he would buy the side of the small hill and build a studio next to the rocks. Around the corner from the Post Office was a shack with an outside oil drum. Guy would always stop and admire the end of the drum that had, over the years, rusted and was partially covered with green moss. "That's what the Pointillists taught us; complimentary colors make the eye vibrate", he would say, "and it's perfect composition. Composition is the secret to art. Seurat would be delighted! I wonder if I bought them a new oil drum, they would let me take that one home for my garden?" Guy Anderson, 91, passed away the end of April. I'm sorry I didn't buy him that oil drum. Photo and article © 1998 by Ray Collins  |