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A PORTRAIT:
Walter Anderson was a singular man born to advantage and generously endowed with creative energy. His education was exemplary, combining seven years of strict academic studies with seven years of excellent art education and training. He was a traveled man exploring Europe, China and Costa Rica. He had an encyclopedic mind and read insatiably in a broad spectrum of interests.
He fell in love with and married Agnes Grinstead and together they had a family of four children. Torn between society’s demand for responsibility as a provider, husband and father and his intense internal struggle for creative expression, he became a tormented man of solitude. A nervous breakdown and hospitalization for several years ensued. Returning to recuperate with his family at the Grinstead estate, “Oldfields”, in Gautier, Mississippi, he illustrated the classic fairy tales, and his keen interest in nature intensified. Soon, however, with the family’s understanding and acceptance he moved away from them into a cottage on the Anderson family compound at Ocean Springs. Using his own physical resources he traveled by foot, bicycle and to reach his Horn Island refuge, he rowed twelve miles in his skiff. Indeed, he traveled China on foot!
His search for truth and the oneness of man and nature led him to the life of a hermit.
During those years of isolation he spent long periods of time on Horn Island, painting, studying the flora and fauna and faithfully writing in his logs. He became known as the Islander and that is what he called himself. Prodigiously he worked with no thought of posterity or desire for fame. It was as if a demon drove him. In fact, recounting a difficult trip to Horn Island he parabolically described his life, “I was in conflict with a demon. Wind and tide, the various misfortunate incidences were only his servants. He was perfectly willing that I should reach the Island, but it must be with the uttermost expenditure of strength and endurance.” Not until his death was the full immensity and scope of his works disclosed. Vast in content, it embraced a wide variety of media; sculpture, printing, ceramics, furniture design, textiles, water colors, ink drawings and
writings. His murals in the Community Center and in the high school were well known, but his private and personal world, the Cottage and its locked little room, provided an astonishing revelation. The little room contained a mural covering all walls and ceiling. His works, still being discovered by the family, are a national treasure full of magic and wonder.