Caroline Anderson is a New England based painter whose work is exhibited and collected nationally and internationally. Exhibitions include the Cleveland and Columbus Museums of Art, Fargo’s Plains Art Museum, Cincinnati’s Arnoff Center for the Arts, the Newport Art Museum, and Chicago’s Judy Saslow, ARC, and WomanMade galleries. International projects include TransCultural Exchange’s Tile Project, consisting of 22 permanent public worldwide venues, including UNESCO Paris.

Artist Statement

The concept of hypernormalization offers a framework for understanding how contemporary life continues to feel stable despite the presence of multiple, overlapping crises. Denial, distraction, and systemic complexity flatten our perception of urgency, allowing familiar routines to persist even as environmental, social, and political pressures intensify. What falters is not awareness, but our capacity to fully register the scale of what surrounds us.

Anderson’s paintings operate within this tension. Their tactile, layered surfaces—marked by technical and pictorial discrepancies—embody the effort to sustain coherence amid instability, particularly related to the climate crisis. The traditional easel format is borrowed from the visual language of domestic space, reinforcing the normalization of crisis: an acknowledgment that disruption has become an ambient condition rather than an exception.

Through her work, Anderson offers recognition rather than resolution. The paintings engage an existential unease that is widely felt but rarely named, inviting viewers to reflect on shared anxieties and the challenge of living attentively in a time of ongoing crisis.