The abstract artwork of Paige Crosland Anderson (BFA ’11) blends the sensibilities of her grandparents: a theater professor, a math professor, and a quilter. In sixth grade Anderson began painting on an easel from the old BYU Academy that one of her grandpas gave her. Her metaphor-making arrived soon after, influenced by her grandmother’s quilting style, as well as Anderson’s exploration of family-history themes of inheritance and succession. Like quilts, “families are just patterns,” says Anderson. “My imagery is now more about daily living, discipleship, and the grind of being a human and a mother.” When in Italy for her husband’s grad program, she says, “I felt drawn to cobblestones, bricks, laundry on lines. Repetitive like motherhood—diapers, naps, feeding. Finding beauty in that has been a gift for me.”
“We don’t see much abstract art in the Church’s visual canon,” notes Anderson, whose triptych Again, Glorified (right) was recently acquired by the BYU Museum of Art. “But abstract art has served me spiritually. I feel I need to make a place for it in our religious art. It speaks to my experience with prayer and testimony—repetitive, a daily routine like most of life, but building to something, with breakthroughs. It’s meditative in its nature. There are individual pieces and pieces all together. Abstraction gives people plenty of room to play with and do their own personal connecting.”
