MEMPHIS, TN.- The centennial traveling exhibition, "Walter Inglis Anderson: Everything I See is New and Strange," currently on view at the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building through January 11, will open at The Dixon Gallery and Gardens on January 25. “A genius is amongst us,” exclaimed Guy Northrup, former art critic for the Commercial Appeal, when he reviewed a Walter Anderson (1903-1965) exhibition in 1950. Since, Anderson’s standing has grown among art critics nationwide, but he is often still referred to as one of the greatest artists you’ve never heard of. Kay Larson of New York Magazine said, “Anderson is making a posthumous stab at national prominence—some say as the South’s greatest artist, a claim I can’t disprove.”

Dixon Director Jay Kamm stated, “Walter Anderson is a true original. No artist has captured more vividly and embraced more intently the life rhythms of the coastal South than he has. His work speaks of the universal love of nature and the interconnectedness of all things. While this exhibition celebrates the centennial of his birth, Anderson’s work is a celebration of his life.” Walter Inglis Anderson: Everything I See is New and Strange was organized by The Walter Anderson Museum of Art and Walter Anderson’s family.

This exhibition brings together 160 works of watercolors, oil paintings, block prints, pottery and woodcarvings. It also includes large photomurals depicting Anderson’s professional and personal projects, such as the Ocean Springs Community Center and the Little Room.

Born in New Orleans and trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Anderson spent most of his life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The painter, watercolorist, and naturalist is recognized for his huge artistic output, the superb quality of his work, and his ability to evoke a sense of place that is both naturalistically accurate and universal in its poetic and artistic appeal. This sense of place is a key element of the exhibition, which includes quotations from the artist’s journals and excerpts from

Anderson’s famous Horn Island Logs that vividly describe the barrier islands off the Mississippi coast. Jeffrey D. Nesin, President of the Memphis College of Art where Anderson continues to be honored annually with a pilgrimage for students, alumni, and faculty to Horn Island, remarked, “The power of Walter Anderson’s work stretches across time and across the South, offering contemporary artists so many angles and crags to grab onto. His willingness to try anything, to take risks for his art and with his art, is just impossible to resist.”

Anderson’s daughter, Mary Anderson Pickard, says the exhibition illustrates her father’s vision. “He had a vision and philosophy of a connected world, that everything relates to everything else and that matter and spirit are so integrated, it’s impossible to separate them,” she said. This exhibition is sponsored by Lakeside Behavioral Health System and Mississippi MS.