Stephen Warde Anderson

Critiques

"...a body of work of considerable strangeness ... The paintings are intensely romantic in an adolescent way ... full of a kind of yearning idealism ... the works have an emotional sincerity that can't be faked." Margaret Hawkins, Chicago Sun-Times, June 19, 1992.

"Anderson quickly reveals an almost limitless mental capacity for art appreciation ; ... His inner drive is to create art, to learn about it, and to pursue it to the point of obsession. ... Anderson's art is an exemplary testament to the pure nature of the best of self-taught artists." Annabelle Helber Massey, Dallas Observer, October 21, 1999.

"Anderson's portraits are precise and intense, with a mysterious remoteness. ... The women are invariably voluptuous and romantic, yet prim and detached, as though they are looking into another world. ... Anderson creates his own genre of the Hollywood actress as temptress and icon, which he presents with a skill unusual for a self-taught artist." John Hood, Encyclopedia of American Folk Art, New York, 2004.

"Anderson's work has a following because he appears to do effortless what a lot of educated artists try to do and fail: he makes fanciful, fantasy-centered art full of belief and devoid of irony. ... What's interesting about Anderson's work, for all its garishness and primitivism, is the earnestness with which it is painted. There's no returning to this kind of self-absorbed naivete for trained artists, but in an art world full of faux innocents, it is useful to see the real thing." Margaret Hawkins, Chicago Sun-Times, September 24, 2004.

"... a self-taught portraitist, intent on capturing women in all of their allegorical beauty ... has a firm grip on narrative works replete with ladies and critters sprung from his splendid imagination." Judith Ann Moriarty, , January 31, 2007.