Neil Andersson American, b. 1944
Born in 1944, an American painter who lets light, rhythm, and memory guide his hand grew from the quiet forests of the Northwest to the golden fields of coastal California. His paintings move like soft improvisations landscapes shaped by breath, color, and the music carried within him.
Neil Andersson (b. 1944) is an American painter whose career bridges fine art, music, and education. Raised in Washington State and long associated with Tacoma and the Pacific Northwest, he studied art at the University of Puget Sound (BA), the University of Washington (BFA), and earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where exposure to French Impressionism deepened his commitment to landscape painting and plein-air practice.
After graduate school, Andersson returned to the Pacific Northwest and focused intensively on painting outdoors, developing confident, economical brushwork and a strong observational foundation. Over time, he translated these on-site studies into larger studio works, retaining the immediacy of direct observation while expanding emotional depth, color harmony, and spatial rhythm. In 2017, he relocated to California’s Central Coast, where the region’s hills, farmland, wetlands, and coast introduced a warmer palette and new motifs. He now works in oil and pastel both en plein air and in the studio, while also continuing explorations in abstraction that emphasize rhythm, gesture, and color relationships.
Education has remained central to Andersson’s life. He holds a Washington State K–12 art teaching certification from Pacific Lutheran University and has taught at both school and university levels. He is affiliated with numerous art organizations and has exhibited widely in Washington and California. Parallel to his visual art, Andersson is a guitarist and composer, co-founding the gypsy-jazz ensemble Pearl Django in the mid-1990s. The improvisational and rhythmic sensibilities of music continue to inform his painting, shaping works that create a quiet dialogue between place, memory, and color.