WALTER INGLIS ANDERSON

Walter Inglis Anderson was born in New Orleans in 1903. His mother was an artist, and passion for art, music, and literature strongly influenced him. He attained degrees from the Parsons Institute of Design in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where his interests included poetry, science, history and art history. He also studied the major literary epics such as Homer and Virgil, which led a number of sketches based on their events.

After his education, Anderson moved to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, married, and began a family. He worked at Shearwater Pottery, founded by his brother Peter, and in the 1930s, he worked on WPA mural projects. It was also in the 1930s that Anderson was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He spent three years in and out of mental hospitals. In the 1940s, he and his family moved to his father-in-law's plantation home in Gautier, Mississippi. Anderson used this time to find recovery through art, and, in 1947, he left his family to begin an epic of his own.

He lived alone in a small cabin on the Gulf Coast, and frequently visited the uninhabited Horn Island during his last 18 years. He painted in the open and sometimes used his boat as a tent He endured extreme weather conditions, tying himself to trees to experience the force of hurricanes. At the age of 62, Anderson died of lung cancer in a New Orleans hospital. Most of his work was discovered in his cabin after his death.