When it comes to painting, Vicki Andersen constantly draws inspiration from her own photographs. The Lompoc-based artist has a “humongous stack” of photos—taken at various times over the past four decades—she’ll peruse before picking the subject of her next acrylic piece, she said.
One of Andersen’s most recent paintings, Glory in the Flower, was based on a photo she took during either “the late ’80s or early ’90s,” she guesses but can’t say for sure. The colorful painting depicts a young girl standing in the middle of a vast flower field.
“I’ve been taking pictures of the flower fields since we first got here,” said Andersen, who moved with her husband and family to Lompoc in 1979 and hasn’t left since.
Back then, “the City of Arts and Flowers” felt enveloped in flowers, with flower fields “as far as the eye can see,” Andersen recalled.
“At one point, Lompoc was the flower seed capital of the world. We were here on, I don’t want to say the tail end of it, but kind of when it was starting to wane,” Andersen said. “It used to be field after field after field after field. … Out over the valley, towards the ocean, it was like a giant patchwork quilt with all these different fields of different flowers.”
Glory in the Flower, based on one of the flower fields Andersen has fond memories of, is featured in the local artist’s latest solo exhibit, which shares the same name as the painting. The phrase was lifted from one of Andersen’s favorite poems, “Splendour in the Grass,” by William Wordsworth.
The English poet’s “glory in the flower” line reverberated “in the back of my brain,” Andersen said, when she decided on the flower theme for her new show, which is currently on display at the Cypress Gallery and is scheduled to run through April 24.
Alongside the exhibit’s titular piece, Glory in the Flower highlights a collection of similarly vibrant paintings with different kinds of flowers at the forefront. Other pieces in Andersen’s show include Rose Fence and Hollyhock Splash.
Andersen is excited for the exhibit’s young viewers to experience Lompoc the way she loves to remember it and hopes the “old-timers” will appreciate her reverence for the city’s sprawling flower fields of the past. Lompoc still has flower fields of course, the artist said, just not as many as it used to.
As a painter, Andersen’s goal is simply to adapt the source photograph she’s working from with bright, colorful vibrancy.
“I don’t have a lot of hidden meaning or a big story behind my work,” said the artist, whose passion for painting started after she was given a set of oils, brushes, and an easel on her 16th birthday. “I like color and I like the way light affects it.”
One interesting trend Andersen has discovered over her decade-long painting career is that no matter what kind of music she puts on in the background while working, it won’t influence her art.
“I’m not affected by music. When I listen to music while I’m painting, I tune it out. I don’t hear it,” Andersen said. “If I play something somber, it doesn’t make my work dark. I tuned it out. I don’t hear it once I get it going. I can put on ‘Hotel California’ on repeat all day and it doesn’t affect what I’m doing.”
Andersen especially loves listening to film soundtracks while she paints. Some of her favorite scores include The Alamo (1960), Out of Africa, and La La Land.
One of Andersen’s favorite compliments she’s ever received about her artwork came from someone who said he heard music while looking at her paintings.
“To think someone’s heard music when they looked at my work, I thought, bless his heart, that is so sweet,” Andersen said.
One of Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood’s favorite CDs to put in while driving is La La Land. Send comments to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 7-14, 2022.