Andrea Carlson

Andrea Carlson (born 1979) is a Minneapolis–Saint Paul, MN-based painter. Carlson earned a BA from the University of Minnesota in 2003 and an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2005. Her work has exhibited widely while gaining support through several fellowships including the Minnesota State Arts Board (2006, 2014) and McKnight/MCAD Foundation Fellowship (2007–08). Her work also belongs to prominent collections, including those of the Weisman Art Museum, the British Museum, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson draws from her Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and Scandinavian heritage as a basis for her highly stylized work. She was influenced by Ojibwe artist George Morrison. Her paintings frequently incorporate text and depictions of art and decorative objects. As Carlson describes in her artist statement, these objects are "displayed hovering like holy icons, floating and centered on the page...over the seashore like a carrot, the shore rises up, itself fluid, all-consuming and assimilating as the earth takes back and buries its histories. Waterways are historically a conduit of trade, interaction, and conflict and are cited in the work for their role in aiding the fluidity and continual change of culture." Interested in the ongoing processes of assimilation and cultural appropriation, Carlson employs cannibalism as a metaphor for cultural consumption in her paintings' titles and imagery. Carlson named her "Windigo" series for an Anishinaabe winter cannibal that often misidentifies those it consumes. Carlson also explores the role of the museum in the representation and interpretation of cultural objects. As Carlson explains, "By citing pieces from the museum's collection in my artwork, I appropriate those objects by drawing them into imagined landscapes. The museum is a landscape in its own right, fostering and assimilating objects foreign to itself."