A darker, more disquieting form of social commentary was voiced by up-and-coming artist Ashley Doggett. Her September exhibit at David Lusk Gallery titled Kept Inside: His Vices unapologetically portrayed the painful truth of white supremacy and its legacy. Accepting the artist’s role as a historian, Doggett creates provocative and explicit imagery of historical slave narratives with chains, tears, and blood. Regardless of the aggressive nature of the subject matter, her imagery is not violent. You see the result of oppression: portraits of hurt but hauntingly composed subjects with titles such as ‘Disgraced’, ‘Abuse’, and ‘Beaten’. Connecting the past to the present, her figures are covered with a transparent substance, staining and weighing them down – an invisible hold that has not yet been completely released.

full article

Anderson’s spiritual and surreal paintings often include ovoid shapes. There is sensuality to these images, and they conjure a crystallized occultist images that recall a favorite Japanese cartoon character, an egg called Gudetama. Anderson’s clever use of color and cross-sections throughout his work cements a psychedelic mythology all his own.

full article

In August, UAC released Calls to Artists for four key new permanent artworks including a suspended sculpture project for the new main entrance to the convention center on N. Main St, two mural projects along the Front Street corridor between the main facility and the West Meeting Rooms and at the redeveloped entrance to the convention center from the parking garage and an interior project inside the new Front Street entrance to the West Meeting Rooms. Fourteen finalists were invited to submit site-specific proposals and presented to the selection committee in October.

full article

Apples, bananas and eggs abound in the work of David Anderson. Featuring block colours, sliced up segments and geometric interpretations of a classic piece of fruit, the Tennessee-born painter has created scenes that are equally familiar as they are of the surreal.

full article

A banana already exists as something to you — it’s the basis of a pratfall, it’s phallic, it’s breakfast. The same goes for an egg — it’s a thing to throw at someone’s house, it’s a life-bearing vessel, it’s breakfast. And then, of course, there is the apple, a hieroglyph for love that appears in so many poems and songs. William Butler Yeats counted the passing of happy, love-filled days as “the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.” In the Bible’s Song of Solomon, one lover begs another, “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples.”

full article

This section also features a pair of works by Nashville-based painter David Onri Anderson. Anderson’s abstract still lifes of oriental lanterns, bananas, and apples have made him one of Nashville’s break-out young artists. Working prolifically, Anderson has already found a recognizable style, but some viewers may struggle to see beyond the repetitiveness in his work. Thankfully, curator Emily Weiner recognized the spiritual undercurrents in Anderson’s paintings and rightly included them here. (A solo exhibition of Anderson’s paintings is also on view at David Lusk Gallery in Nashville through October 26, when he will be joined by Weiner for a public conversation at the gallery.) Snail E.S.P. and Super Ripe Nana Spiral both depict naturally occurring spiral forms found throughout nature and art history. The “E.S.P.” reference in one title recalls a nineteenth-century theory that snails became telepathically linked after mating. Sex, nature, art and spirit—these patterns all come together through Anderson’s muted palette and charmingly offhand renderings.

full article

The psychologist Carl Jung posited the existence of the collective unconscious, a deep layer of the psyche that is shared by all humanity across time. The dynamics of the collective unconscious, which he called archetypes, find narrative expression in myths and visual expression in symbols.

full article

When I was about 4 years old, I remember seeing a puddle and imagining a little world in that puddle with these little green floating creatures that have purple crafts that help them float around. I made little drawings of this idea with markers.

full article

David Onri Anderson is an emerging Nashville artist who’s been ticking a lot of boxes this year: His September 2018 display at Elephant Gallery was reviewed in Art in America by Scene arts editor Laura Hutson Hunter, and shortly after, he made his Los Angeles gallery debut at Patrick Painter.

full article