We were lucky to catch up with Tad Anderson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tad, appreciate you joining us today. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

Years ago, while I was still in college studying landscape architecture, I landed a plum part-time job as a draftsman (think drawing board and T-square, mechanical pencil and pink pearl eraser, vellum and blueprints) for a civil engineering firm. My college design projects had always been conceived as thoughtful, contemplative, experiential concepts… “I wonder what that textured series should be? What color palette should I implement? What rhythms do I want, as a positive influence to the users’ experience?” For me, that often meant mulling the project’s goals, staring at a blank 24 x 36 sheet of torn-off bumwad, or contemplating a blank page in a sketchbook. “Creative inspiration is never spontaneous”, might have been my young-self’s motto.

My boss — a gifted. established-career civil engineer — was cut from different creative cloth. His process was methodical. Always methodical. Always. The start of every project began on the drawing board in the same way — complete the title block, decide the drawing scale, choose North, begin the site layout with drafting tools, create perfect straight lines, perfect radii, perfect hand lettering.

By comparison, his motto seemed to me to be “Tad, just start drafting”. Or “start drafting”. Or “why haven’t you started drafting yet?”. Or “I thought you’d be farther along than this. Start drafting!”. (To be fair, in hindsight, I’m pretty certain that his dialogue with me was far more wide-ranging, but I remember those repeated, “affirming” instructions most vividly.)

And I learned from his persistent pushing… to begin. Just begin. Draw the first line. Add graphite to that vellum. Be methodical about it.

Several years later, when I opened my own studio and practice, that instructive training had become rote. “Just get it started”, was my right-in-front-of-me-now recipe, that I used over and over, to wade into a particular project’s creative requirements. The simple motivation that it mined in me, aided me in meeting deadlines, staying within budgets, understanding revisions, creating schedules, and reaching the other end of a project… “Get it completed. Close it out”. It was as important to my career DNA as “analyze, then synthesize” was to each and every project.

Now, as I’ve waded into the muck of “becoming an artist”, it still pushes me. And, no secret, that first stroke of color on my digital canvas is still powerful and addictive.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a self-taught, emerging digital artist — my second career. I was born in Minnesota and have lived here my entire life. I ran a boutique landscape architecture design-build firm for more than forty years. Borrowing from that career, my field observations of Minnesota/Midwestern topography, geology, prairie, woodland, farmland, lakescape, and driftless landform, help to conceive and formulate almost every piece that I create. I often depict scenes from Midwestern natural areas — our lakes and rivers, and streams, agriculture, landmark places.

My compositions are abstracted depictions of terrain and landforms, flora, and specific landscape elements. My colors are always drawn from nature… flowering elements, foliage elements, water, sky, soil, seasons of color change. I compare the color abstractions to extracting raw pigment colors from crushed fruits, berries, fresh petals, dried flowers, foliage oils, indigenous minerals, clay, mud.

My digital paintings are regional stories, captured for that visual moment. My point of view is an observation of our co-shared land and its unique, regional character… resulting in a visual depiction that I hope others will recognize, perhaps take visual ownership of, and maybe find inspiration within.

My pieces are intended to celebrate nature — often found right in our backyard!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

The natural world we all inhabit occasionally feels as though it is slipping away, somehow. A core creative task for me is to capture a natural moment or setting and hope it is inspirational to someone viewing my digital painting. I don’t want to “paint pretty flowers” or “paint a tropical beach scene” for some hotel wall. Some of my own favorite works to interpret are historic maps… and how they invite me to contemplate the particular time and place that the mapmaker/cartographer was depicting (often incorrectly). Similar to primitive cave drawings, historic maps let us hear the artist announcing, “I was here”.

I hope my digital abstractions of natural settings, visually transcribe the particular time and place that I’m working within, hopefully with some “snapshot” that a viewer can find their own inspiration in.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Learning-how-to-run-a-business dept… As a young landscape architect/business owner just starting out, I made it a point to join every relatable professional association and club that I could find the time for. The trade associations, especially, and always the interactions with other professionals, provided me with information and advice and techniques and tools and guidelines and resources and news that directed me on how to run my own business and how to grow my own business. (Resources that were valuable in ways I could never have envisioned.)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tadandersonart.darkroom.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tadandersonart/ (@tadandersonart)
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tad-anderson

Image Credits

Tad Anderson, Laura Helmer