Courtesy of the Walter Anderson FamilyInitially I was confused by the decision to honor my father at the Oxford Conference for the Book. While it is true that he did quite a bit of writing,drew illustrations for many books, and was certainly a voracious reader, he was primarily a visual artist. So it seemed strange to me to dedicate the conference to him when there are so many talented writers who deserve to be honored in this way. However, after hearing the confidence and enthusiasm in Ann Abadie’s voice, I became interested in exploring the connections between my father’s art and world literature.

Fortuitously, exhibitions of Eudora Welty’s photographs have recently helped to clarify an essential link between visual and verbal art. By demonstrating that she saw elements of life that others did not and was capable of revealing her perspective through pictures as well as words, these exhibitions shed light upon the underlying nature of literature. Whether she was looking through the lens of a camera or the lens of a writer’s eye, a passionate love of life gave her a perspective that created art. This “artistic vision” distinguished her as a visual artist as well as a writer and connected the literature that she produced to other forms of creativity. For her, writing and photography were apparently merely different channels of the same river. That river of creativity was the source of her vision. She did not have creative vision because she was a writer. She was a writer, and a photographer, because she had creative vision. By demonstrating that artistic vision forms the foundation for both written and visual art she made it much easier to understand why the Oxford Conference for the Book might choose to honor a visual artist. By doing so the conference has ignored artificial boundaries between different disciplines and drawn attention to a natural relationship that brings all art together.

This relationship has been demonstrated in my father’s work as well as in Eudora Welty’s. Although he was primarily a visual artist, when he turned his vision toward the written word, the result often reflected a creative perspective. The backs of his paintings were sometimes covered with observations, poems, and aphorisms. He also wrote children’s stories, essays, and journals or “logs.” Some of his Horn Island logs have actually developed a following of avid readers, and a collection of journals from travels to other destinations has been compiled for publication in 2009. His writing, informal as it was, carried the weight of truth and the poetry of simplicity. Our hearts were touched when he wrote, What could be more delectable than to climb a new blade of grass, with the dew still on it, and spend the morning swinging in the wind. We found ourselves yearning for a simpler form of existence and were empowered by the realization that we too could look through the eyes of a frog just by shifting our perspective slightly. When he wrote about how a bird taking flight could affect him, his words provided a more pithy philosophical insight. The bird flies and in that fraction of a fraction of a second man and the bird are real. He is not only King, he is man. He is not only man he is the only man and that is the only bird. Every feather, every mark, every part of the pattern of its feathers is real and he, man, exists and he is almost as wonderful as the thing he sees.

Most of my father’s writing has not been published. However, two passages from his off-the-island logs provide a “feel” for the inner vision that coursed through his writing as well as his paintings and drawings. These logs are the roughest form of writing that he did. They were just notes to his family about where he was and what he was doing on a particular day. When he read them to us he generally added things from his memory to provide a more complete account of his experiences. These rough notes seemed to serve merely as aids to help him remember. But his perspective was part of everything that he did, so they carry a sense of the place from which he looked and a feeling for who he was. The first of these passages is taken from a walking and camping trip through the woods of MCourtesy of the Walter Anderson Familyississippi.

I built a fire there and ate lunch. I was on the point of leaving when a strange and secret thing happened. I felt I needed a sign that the birds still loved me and so I thought if only one of you will come a little closer I will know and at once a hermit thrush came and sat on a stump a few feet from me and a woodpecker with a red head came and lit on a trunk and put its head into the hole. Then I suddenly knew the meaning of love, and felt “my love has come to me.” And knew that love meant having something to love, and not being loved. No amount of being loved could possibly give understanding in the same way.

I left there and crossed an open field, still uplifted, and a fable came to me. The little animals and birds I had just seen had all been at the crucifying of Christ.

Yes said the thrush I was there and flew out of God’s hair, and the roman soldiers were terrified, and I was there said the woodpecker and put my head into God’s side to get my red head, and we were there and had taken refuge in his clothes, said the other little birds and animals. The Romans nearly ran away when we came out.

Then I walked on and suddenly a flock of meadowlarks flew up from under my feet and I was startled and had barely recovered from them when a rabbit ran out from under my feet and I thought, I too, am a Roman.

The second passage is from his log of a trip to China. All of his belongings had been stolen following a confrontation with armed men. So he had retraced his steps to a town visited earlier. There some kind friends had provided him with a room for the night. In his journal a surreal collection of verbal images captures the ambiance of an evening spent in a mysterious country far from home.

Courtesy of the Walter Anderson Family

In my new room I have a wide gallery which overlooks the river.

The night was warm and I took numerous sponge baths and sat in an armchair on the gallery.

Immediately in front is the enclosure or compound; outside its walls is the street with a walk and stone railing between it and the river. Below is the abyss, the gulf, of the river itself with static lights of anchored boats, moveing [sic] lights of an occasional restless spirit, seeking a different anchorage and the vertical reflections of lights on the shore.

Then comes the far shore with its strings of climbing lights, its different combinations of lights all arranged as if to arouse the curiosity of the observer on the opposite bank—a sort of visual tug of war, each side trying to pull the other into the water by curiosity.

It is very still. Although the graceful tree just beyond the pillar of the house has its leaves stirred occasionally by a breeze, it is all very still.

The procession of people, passing outside the gate—their talking, the clicking of the wooden soles of their shoes on the road, is dimuendo, has been dimuendo for about two hours. The people pass, their bodies visible in white clothes in the moonlight their feet invisible—groups moveing [sic] in opposite directions seem to pass thru each other without bodily resistance.

From the river, the abyss, comes the vibration of a gong, it is taken up by every flat surface it reaches. The moonlit night is filled with its vibrations, it becomes part of the moonlight and the fixed lights swim in it as if it were a new element. The gulf is filled with light and sound.

And yet, with thought, I am conscious (and the deliberate chosen sentences from the next roof help me) that all of this is ephemeral and depends for its effect and, perhaps, for its existence, upon the dark and solid columns of the house in which I sit.

The same river that flowed through Eudora Welty’s life and gave he photographs relevance seems to have flowed through my father’s life an given his words some poetry. However, he was not a writer and certainly would have been shocked by any suggestion that he might have been one He kept his art firmly anchored between the solid pillars of the house in which he sat. In terms of his appreciation for literature those dark and solid columns were often drawn in India ink. Approximately one third of his art is devoted to illustrations and responses to books and poems.

My father was unquestionably a lover of literature. He loved to watch a good writer take images from life and shape them into words. By converting those words back into images he was expressing his appreciation and completing a creative circle that validated the author’s efforts. By drawing these illustrations he undoubtedly enhanced his reading experience, making it a more active process in which he played a vital role. But thinking of his illustrations only as evidence of appreciation may be a shortsighted approach. There is also a more practical element to them. He knew that some people respond more strongly to thoughts and concepts while others think primarily in terms of images. So it was only common sense for him to suspect that increasing the number and quality of illustrations in a book would make that book more appealing to those who prefer images. It also might enhance the experience of reading for those whose imagery was limited. The numbers of his illustrative drawings suggest that he was considering books with illustrations for every page. The time that he spent carefully printing out the passages that he chose to illustrate supports this conclusion. The drawings for Robinson, a book that he wrote and illustrated in this manner, provide a good example of this process carried to completion. He may actually have been imagining lithographic editions of the books he illustrated. Ironically, changes in printing techniques have recently made such an idea much more practical just at a time when Hurricane Katrina has destroyed so many of his drawings that it would be impossible to fully reconstruct his efforts now. But it is an intriguing concept. Perhaps the drawings and block prints that have been placed in a traveling exhibition as a result of this conference will inspire some future artist to realize his dream of the perfect partnership between the visual and literary arts.