Walter Anderson: The Extraordinary Life and Art of the Islander

"The artist knows that for him to be successful, art and nature must become one."

o~ Walter Anderson.

- [Woman 1] No, he really was a genius.

Oh, what's that book?

Oh, "The Giants in the Earth".

My father was one of the Giants.

He really was.

- [Man 1] I knew that Daddy was not conforming to anybody's expectations by living under a boat on Horn Island or riding his bicycle around all over the country.

- [Woman 1] That giant you see in all the books couldn't possibly have existed if Walter Anderson hadn't been allowed to be himself.

His whole self.

- [Woman 2] I'm forever grateful that Walter Anderson followed his angels and gave us this massive body of work.

- [Man 2] I think that he went a little bit over the edge a couple of times, but he kept getting the work done, you know.

He kept going out to Horn Island and laying under that boat and fighting those mosquitoes and making those watercolors.

- [Man 3] My God!

These paintings are amazing!

(thoughtful piano music) (wind chime) - [Male Announcer] "Walter Anderson, The Extraordinary Life and Art of the Islander" is made possible by a generous grant from The Reflection Fund - [Woman 3] He would sail to Horn Island to paint for weeks at a time.

- [Woman 2] He was compelled.

- [Man 3] Walter Anderson loved life.

That led him to want to become an artist.

- [Woman 4] And of course, he had very many adventures.

- [Man 4] It was a hurricane, and he went out to Horn Island, fastened himself up to a pine tree.

- [Woman 1] Creative energy wants to come out this way, this way, this way, this way.

- [Radio News Reporter] 100 years ago tomorrow, American painter, muralist, sculptor and iconoclast Walter Inglis Anderson was born.

To those who have seen his vivid watercolors or epic murals, Walter Anderson's work is unforgettable.

The Smithsonian Institution has just opened a major exhibition of his art.

Some 160 pieces.

The largest showing that... [transmission fades out] - [Man 1] Daddy has always been a mystery to me.

You know, when I was growing up, he was the Horn Island Hermit and the town fool.

Everybody, including his family, more or less looked at him as a bum.

- [Man 5] He lived an extraordinary life, a dramatic series of journeys filled with a passion for experiencing nature through his process of art-making.

- [Man 4] He started these trips to the Barrier Islands, and there were several times he didn't make it.

- [Man 1] He didn't mind swimming behind the boat and pushing it when necessary.

If it were full of water, he would just swim and push it, or pulling it, if it was in shallow water.

- [Man 4] He sank his skiff.

He still didn't worry about anything happening to him.

His mission was to get to where he was going.

He didn't worry that he wasn't going to get there.

It was just a matter of when.

- [Man 2] I find Walter Anderson a great source of inspiration.

I mean, there's so much of it, it's so dense.

The patterns that project themselves through his work are really, really important.

And I can't see enough of it.

I got to tell you, it took me a while to kind of get to know the work, to understand it, because I didn't at first, but now I do.

He got the work done.

He basically took that watercolor to a level that it hadn't been before.

- You know why I think he started drawing was because of his mother.

She just was a person who felt that if you wanted to draw, you had to draw every day.

- Their father gave them a sense of adventure and the love of nature, and their mother gave them the belief that they could make the world a more beautiful place.

- All of them, I think, were very close to her, but Walter was closest.

- Mayer would give these little black books and she gave one to Walter that said to write 750 words a day.

And he crossed out "words" and wrote in "birds", and then he filled with that book with birds.

And I just thought that was very clever.

- When Peter was 15 and Walter was 12, they were sent to military school in New York.

Peter took to it pretty well.

Walter did not.

- [Narrator] "I know what discipline is, having had four years of it.

I still suffer from it."

o~ Walter Anderson.

- [John] At the age of 15, he decided to sail a small sailboat to New Orleans, a hundred miles across open water.

He hit a storm.

The wind came up and his sailboat sailed away without him.

- [Billy] He turned over.

He had swam to a beacon in Lake Borgne.

I think he stayed on that beacon a couple of two or three days.

And it was even reported in the newspapers that Walter Anderson had drowned in Lake Borgne.

They found the sailboat that he was in had turned over and they never found the body, but he was still hanging on to the beacon.

- [John] Although he said afterwards that he would never do anything like that again, he spent his whole life doing things like that.

- [DiFatta] When Walter was 19 years old, he carves this chest.

His father's favorite book was Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book".

So he used imagery from that book, to sort of butter his dad up, convince him to let him go to art school.

Eventually, Walter ended up going to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.

Didn't take long for him to get tired of being inside, and he would often leave class and go to the zoo and just draw pictures of the zoo animals all day long.

- [Narrator] I've had very good training, you know.

I think few people are better qualified to paint the appearance of things than I.

Yet, that is not really what I want.

The heart is the thing that counts.

The mingling of my heart with the heart of the wild bird.

To become one with the thing I see.

- [DiFatta] With all of the drawings that he did at the zoo, he was able to get a Crescent Fellowship and go study in France.

- He did go to the cathedrals, but he did not go to museums very much.

He mainly went to the caves.

He did go in the caves and he did see those things.

And I think he was deeply, deeply impressed by them.

I love that piece of pottery.

It is like the cave paintings.

The the horses do run.

They move like they cave paintings.

(horses galloping) - She lived, of course, in New Orleans.

She wanted to go to different places and to see different things and have new experiences.

And so one day she took the Coast train, came out to Ocean Springs and she said, "Is there any property for sale around here?"

And she bought it just like that.

Immediately.

- [Billy] Peter and Daddy and Mac developed the Shearwater Pottery.

- [DiFatta] For a father wanting his sons to follow him in business, he had to settle for his sons being in the business of art.

- [John] Even from the beginning, he was attempting to help his brothers to contribute to the family business.

- [Sissy] The old Biloxi potter, George Ohr, died about that time.

His family had his wheel for sale, his old kick-wheel, and Peter was able to buy it.

- [Reporter on TV] Three sons, Peter, Walter, and James McConnell built and developed the pottery business and retained much of the 1900 charm even today.

Shearwater pottery exists today much in the same manner they existed 50 years or more.

The buildings, the original pieces of pottery, the equipment, and the Andersons are Shearwater Pottery.

- When I started the pottery, I didn't-- I didn't really know where it would wind up.

I didn't know whether it had a future or not.

- [DiFatta] One of the most interesting things about Walter Anderson's work is the way he would carve intricate designs and he would make an altogether new thing.

It was this collaboration that was happening between the brothers.

But Anderson's line work set these apart.

- Walter wouldn't just get a pot from Peter and start drawing on it.

He would make drawings and paintings of his designs first.

And so they were carefully thought out, and his compositions were created specifically to go with a certain pot, or a certain plate, or cup, or bowl.

- And there's something magical about where that pottery is located, you know, sitting on the harbor overlooking the water.

Something about that place takes you back in time.

- [John] The Shearwater existence was kind of a fairy tale that was populated by larger-than-life heroic figures.

They were all very extraordinary people.

Shearwater was like our own little private Camelot.

- [Rankin] I think artists and writers and creative folks are drawn to places like that.

That was why people continue to go there, and that's why such wonderful work was made there.

- [Sissy] But we went to the showroom and we were absolutely flabbergasted.

It was so beautiful.

We had no idea there was anything like this.

- My mother had gone to Radcliffe and Pat and her mother drove over to Shearwater looking for something to send her for her room at Radcliffe.

They bought that bowl for my mother and sent it to her, and she loved it.

And Pat met Peter.

She just thought Peter was a dream of a man.

Just wonderful.

- Peter is courting Pat, and so Walter comes along with him to meet these lovely Grinstead sisters.

- [Sissy] And I remember very well when I met him.

Something sparked between us at Radcliffe.

- [Browne] He was immediately enamored with her.

And when she went back to Radcliffe, he wrote her love letters every day.

- [Narrator] Dearest Sissy, I am dying of thirst if I don't see you soon.

- [Browne] He really pursued her until finally she agreed to go out with him.

If only he would stop sending all those letters.

- [Sissy] I did definitely think that he was a genius.

I remember feeling, well, he was a real artist.

- [DiFatta] And they started courting.

He asked her father for permission to take her hand in marriage.

Her father said, "Well, if you're going to marry my daughter, you better have a job."

- [Sissy] And it was at that time, Walter and Mac began their business.

- [DiFatta] He designed and made these beautiful figurines, these small things he called "widgets".

And some of these figurines were somewhat problematic, but they were made as a way to make money, and that was something that Anderson knew was a reality.

- [Dunlap] Well, the Anderson family were trying to make a living during the Depression as artists, and they made what they called "widgets", these wonderful little cast pieces that I buy now and collect.

And they were just waiting for people to show up and buy the damn things for pennies.

- [Mary] It was my Uncle Mac who was the dear one.

Both my father and Peter were tense.

They were -- they would explode.

Peter would sometimes get tired of seeing the widgets in the showroom and hurl them into the woods outside at trees.

- [Narrator] Just remember, that discontent is one of the penalties of greatness.

I don't expect to spend the rest of my life making widgets.

- And my father called the widgets "The evil that men do that lives after them".

That's what he called the widgets, because he kept seeing people make them until he died.

They were still making them away.

- [Narrator] Someday I'm going to give up everything else, and just paint for a while.

- Both of them had experience in the world beyond Mississippi, you know.

It's kind of amazing.

So they get together.

- [Codling] Sissy and Walter do marry.

They move into the cottage that is on Shearwater property.

In the evenings after they had finished work, Sissy would read to Walter Anderson from these great works of literature.

And while she's reading to him, he's hand looping rugs for their home.

So he actually is creating all of the furnishings for their home there at Shearwater.

Really melding this connection between beauty and functionality.

- [DiFatta] After a canoe trip up north, Walter and his wife were on their way back down, going down the Mississippi River, and Walter was bitten by a mosquito and contracted malaria.

He had a very, very high fever and went into a coma, and his wife had to get him ashore and make sure he got medical care.

It caused some real problems after that and was at the beginning of his three year bout with mental illness where he was in and out of mental institutions.

- [Codling] He goes through a whole series of hospitalizations, both in Mississippi and in Maryland.

- The first time that he became ill... - [DiFatta] He did a lot of drawings, self portraits.

He called himself "The Alienado", because he just felt like he was so different and didn't fit in anywhere.

- [Whitfield] Some of the drawings he did during that time period took an overhead perspective of things like his cottage and of looking down on birds and looking down over Shearwater.

I feel as if his spirit had taken flight, as if he was escaping the confines of those three years in the hospital.

- [DiFatta] He walks all the way back to Mississippi.

He's not seen for months.

When he gets back to Ocean Springs, he's emaciated, he's shaky, and he had lost the ability to draw.

That's when he starts using his seven motifs to retrain himself how to draw.

- [Mary] When he first came back to us at Oldfields, Daddy's hands shook.

He was very, very thin.

He didn't look healthy at all.

He started his calendar drawings, and he did those at Oldfields every day.

He did them for almost three years.

- [John] Three years when he lived at Oldfields from 1940 to 1946.

He was experiencing art.

He was feeling art.

- [Mary] He would go out and sit on the ground in front of the cows or out by the barn or on the front watching the gulls and pelicans and shorebirds on the beach.

- [John] He went through a phase when everything he did was almost a transcription of visual music.

He used repetition as rhythm: boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

- [Narrator] There is a sensation of music as if the leaves were notes and the accompaniment of sound changes with the color of the leaves.

- [Mary] It was wonderful.

He didn't mind a bit if you came and sat by him and watched, as long as you didn't spill the ink or talk.

You couldn't talk.

- [DiFatta] He creates an incredible amount of artwork for the children.

Illustrations from books that he would read, wood carvings, puppets that he made out of wood and he would put on puppet shows.

- [Mary] It was fascinating to watch him draw because he did it very rapidly (imitates fast drawing) And it was like the animal was going across the page.

- [DiFatta] And that's when he does the bulk of his linoleum block prints there at Oldfields.

A lot of them he carved in the attic of Oldfields to make use of the heat because it softened up the linoleum some.

- [Rankin] His block prints that were pioneering preceding Picasso's large scale linoleum blocks.

He created these, you know, on the back of discontinued wallpaper.

Sold them for a dollar a foot for people who didn't have a lot of money, but who had an appetite for beauty.

- [John] His block prints were put on fabric so that all the tables in Shearwater when I was growing up had runners that were more Walter Anderson decorated fabrics.

- [Billy] We learned at an early age that if we saw Daddy and he was not painting us, that is saying to us was "go away".

Now, if he was drawing us, it was "be still, (laughing) and let me finish the drawing".

- [Leif] I have a book, "The Philosophical and Spiritual Search", and it's astonishing to me that he gave me that book when I was a small child.

- [Mary] He gave me "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres".

He gave me Adolpho Best-Maugard's "Method for Creative Design" and wrote in it "Happy Birthday from Bob".

But the library card thing was still in it!

(laughing) He had taken it out of the library!

- [Billy] We knew whenever he said, "Let's go," we had an adventure coming on.

He was a very entertaining kind of person, you know.

It wasn't until later on that he was more to himself.

- [DiFatta] There was a lot of tension between Walter and Sissy's father.

That tension led to Walter moving back to Shearwater.

- It was at the end of that period that his work suddenly just became everything to him.

It always had been, really, but he'd been fighting it.

- [DiFatta] Sissy and the children moved in with Walter's mother, Mayer.

Walter moved back to the cottage and they were actually neighbors, but they didn't live together.

And they never divorced.

They lived separately, but they were still together, in a way.

Not a traditional-type marriage after this point.

- [Sissy] We had very, very beautiful manners.

If he found out that a friend of his was ill or in trouble or anything like that, he would go to them immediately.

- [DiFatta] Walter would go visit the family at their place, but no one would ever come over to his place.

- [Billy] Here comes this silly fellow coming down the street, tipping his hat to the ladies and being very polite.

I would cross to the other side of the street and turn and look the other way so as not to be noticed by him, or not to be acknowledged by him.

- [DiFatta] He didn't stay away from the family because he wanted to stay away from the family.

It created an awkward situation for them.

And they were even embarrassed for other people, their friends, to know that that was their father.

- [Narrator] They have tried to keep me from going where I could paint without them.

So shall I go where I can paint without them, or shall I go where I can paint only with them?

Or shall I stay where I can paint partly with them and partly without them?

- [Woman on Radio] ...say that Mary Anderson is the 16 year old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Walter, that is, Bob Anderson.

- [Mary] Bob Anderson, that's my father.

He's the artist of the pottery.

Daddy always illustrated our nursery rhymes and fables with colorful block prints.

- [Woman] What in the world is that red and white figure in the showroom?

- [Mary] That's nothing but a crab.

- [Woman] A crab??

Good gracious!

- [Mary] It looks just like one.

Of course, it's sort of a gay crab.

- [Woman] I'll say!

- [Mary] Has a few extra legs and some flowers on its back.

- So Walter Anderson did not paint for fame and he had opportunities in his lifetime, a show at the Brooklyn Museum, an exhibition there.

- [Whitfield] So he was supposed to be going to a big show in Brooklyn that featured his art.

- His Aunt Daisy died and left him $2000.

- They were going to take him to New York to become this rich, famous artist, but he'd inherited a little money and he shipped all of his block prints to New York.

And when his family came to pick him up from the cottage, there was a little note that said, "Gone to China".

- [Mary] Daddy was very strongly attracted to China because he felt it was one of the oldest cultures.

He was fascinated by Tibet.

- His goal was to walk all the way across war-torn China, to Tibet, to see the temple art.

I mean, I can't even imagine the possibility of that.

- I mean, he was having a wonderful time, I guess, until he got robbed and these soldiers came in.

These soldiers stopped him, wanted to see everything he had.

And so instead of staying in that town, which he had planned to do, he went out of town and went to sleep on the levee by the rice paddy.

And he said he dreamed that a water buffalo came and hooked his backpack and went off with it.

When he woke up, it was gone.

And he believed that those soldiers followed him and took it.

But it was everything he had, you know, his money, his passport, everything.

So he had to walk back, walk back, walk back, and when he got to Peking, then he met the missionaries who were still there.

They gave him enough money to go to the dentist and they gave him enough money to keep him until he could get money from Momma and Mayer.

- That was truly a whole new world for him in that it opened up a part of himself that is visible in those strange, vibrant red lobsters and, you know, all those extraordinary paintings that he did then, many of which were lost.

I think it was an extraordinary experience for him, both good and not so good, of course.

- After he came back from China, he wrote in one of his journals, "Art is incredible.

"Not for itself, but in changing the artist's relation "to other things.

Perspective."

I think there was a 180 degree shift.

Art was not important for itself after that trip.

Art became the tool.

It was no longer the goal.

It was the tool that he utilized to develop greater vision.

Before China, vision was the tool, and art was the goal.

After China, art was the tool, vision was the goal.

Art became a byproduct.

This kind of explains why all of his work after that period, almost all of it was done on typewriter paper and it would end up on the floor, end up in a trash can.

The art was a way of experiencing life, a way of enhancing the experience of life through art.

He was attempting to develop that alternative perspective.

He was attempting to develop a vision which would allow him to realize the beauty of humanity as fully as possible.

- [Man on Radio] I want to do a little cross-examination about the murals in the Community Center.

- The panels depict the seven planets.

First is the moon and a slender tree whose boughs reach for the lunar heaven.

And then Mercury is envisioned as a bay tree, and so designed.

Next comes Venus, thought by some to be the masterpiece of the paintings, the dalliance of Eagles.

- [Browne] He returned from China and got permission to paint the walls with murals as his gift.

But a lot of people were not happy with the results.

- [Mary] Daddy has found Saturn in the form of a burly bear climbing the fat trunk of a tree pawing for honey and eating bees.

(radio fades out) - [Rankin] When Walter was in the Community Center painting the walls, it was starting to be used as a Community Center.

Leif, who became a world-class ballet dancer, was in there taking her first dance lessons while her father was painting this mural.

- [Leif] She carries a child around the room, a child call Leif-y, whose father left to create the art you admire.

- You know, there was no charge for painting those murals.

Politics being what they are, he wasn't sure that one of the greatest creations he did, the next day might be painted over.

I'm sure it bothered him.

- [Narrator] Sometimes I think I'm great.

Sometimes I'm just a no-good bum.

- [Billy] I realized the genius that he was, and I realized the problems that he had.

He was really trying to find himself.

I think he really did when he started these trips to the Barrier Islands, mostly Horn Island.

- [Narrator] I am continually arriving from some strange planet.

Everything I see is new and strange.

There is no precedent.

All things exist in themselves having integrity of their own.

The wind, the grass, and the little animals that move through the grass.

- [Mary] We just saw him going by with his wheelbarrow when he was going to load the boat and go out to the island.

- [Leif] Our mother made it seem a natural thing.

He was an artist.

He would row out to Horn Island.

There it seems, more than anywhere else, he found what he needed.

The images he would turn into art.

- I have noticed from my own experience that the smaller the boat you use to get out to Horn Island, the bigger the island is, and the further away it is.

And if you want Horn Island to be a big, important place that is far removed from the ordinary, that allows you to experience life from an alternative viewpoint.

Smaller the boat you use, the more you're going to get out of it.

- [Narrator] Such a sky, such water and Horn Island between with me walking it.

The back of Moby Dick, the white whale, the magic carpet surrounded by inhabited space.

Strange.

Inhabited.

Space.

- [John] In a small boat, you feel the water, you feel the waves.

The wind blows across your skin.

You become very, very aware of nature.

And you begin the transition from one reality to another.

- [Narrator] To realize all part of the divine symphony: bird, wave, wind, wind, wave, bird.

- [John] He was very much alone on Horn Island, most of the time, in the sense that there weren't people there.

But he was one of the least lonely people that I've ever met.

Solitude for him was a tool which helped him to find unity with all people and all creatures.

- [Narrator] The bird flies, and in that fraction of a fraction of a second, man and bird are real and he, man, exists.

He's almost as wonderful as the thing he sees.

- Yeah, he took his skiff and he turned it over, usually on island.

Pulled it up on the island, turned it over, and that was his house.

He lived under that skiff on the beaches.

He wasn't a person looking for comforts.

He was looking to create his art, and did a pretty good job at it.

- [Narrator] One single beautiful image is practically inexhaustible.

Man is a wasteful fool.

So much depends on the dominant mode on shore that it was necessary for me to come to sea to find the condition.

Everything seems conditional on the islands out there.

If I eat, I live.

If something stronger than I doesn't destroy me.

- He writes in that quote that only celestial beings are allowed to visit there.

And then he pauses and says, "Province made an exception in my case."

- I think it worked for everyone, probably.

It was strange compared to what other children had in their family life.

But it was it was sort of dependable.

He would go for maybe three weeks at a time, get his provisions and be gone.

Take his boat out and be in his own world completely.

No pretense, no efforts at pretense.

- [Narrator] They ask what I was doing.

Didn't I get lonely?

I said I was drawing birds and hadn't been lonely yet.

- Daddy, in one of his journals summarized what he was doing out on Horn Island.

He wrote that in order to realize the beauty of man, we must realize our relation to nature.

I think that in those 20 years that he was living in solitude on a wilderness island, he was attempting to realize his relation to nature so that he could realize the beauty of humanity.

- [Narrator] True art consists of spreading wide the intervals so that imagination may fill the space between the trees.

- [John] With his eyes that were attuned to the flick of the smallest bird, attuned to the slightest breeze out on the island, I'm sure that he saw that we didn't want him around when we were with our friends.

That we didn't want to have to admit that our father was different.

So I think perhaps a lot of the reason that he spent so much time out on Horn Island was actually kind of consideration.

- [Leif] He managed, by creating this life away from us, but now and then connecting again.

He would connect, he'd go out, connect, he'd go out.

And he had long, long periods of where he was claiming his own space.

And that claiming meant creating that sort of churning, constant churning of creative energy that wants to come out this way, this way, this way, this way, this way.

Any way, any way.

- [John] Daddy wrote about it.

There's a wonderful quote about he experiences light through his senses.

Through touch, taste, and smell, sight, hearing.

He feels the tree and he becomes the tree.

- [Leif] And he had the freedom, partly because of my mother, partly because she trained us, partly because he didn't have a choice, perhaps.

- We don't speak evil of the dead down here.

We don't speak ill of the dead.

And, you know, I think that he went a little bit over the edge a couple of times, but he kept getting the work done.

He kept going out to Horn Island and laying under that boat and fighting those mosquitoes and making those water colors.

So that's all I need to know about Anderson.

That's all.

- [Leif] He had the freedom, took the freedom to continually send out, send out, send out, send out, send out, send out, send out.

I think Horn Island was the best place for him to let that happen.

- [Narrator] The world of man is far away and so is man.

How pleasant without him.

- As the years went by, he began to stay out there longer and longer.

If he had been out for three weeks, he would have 40 pieces of pottery to do.

He wouldn't think of not producing all of what he was supposed to produce.

So I think he was glad to see the family and he had things to show and things to tell.

Sometimes he would read his log.

- People think of Walter Anderson as a visual artist first, and he certainly was.

But he was also a philosopher, a poet.

And a lot of what he thought and the way he thought about his art process is contained in his writings.

He decoded for us a lot of what he was thinking about.

And they're really valuable artistic records in their own right.

- [Narrator] The first poetry is always written against the wind by sailors and farmers who sing with the wind in their teeth.

The second poetry is written by scholars and wine drinkers who have learned to know a good thing.

The third poetry is sometimes never written.

but when it is, it's by those who have brought nature and art together into one thing.

o~ Walter Anderson.

- One day when I was about 15 years old, I came in from fishing and found a shady place.

And while I was there, stretched out the middle seat of my skiff, some fishermen came up and started cleaning their catch.

I was half under the dock and I could see them through the spaces between the boards of the dock, but they really couldn't see me.

I was in the shadow, in the dark.

I kind of dozed back off and then I heard the unmistakable sound of oar locks in the distance as a boat was being rowed into the mouth of the harbor.

And I knew almost immediately who it was.

That was my daddy returning from Horn Island.

The man who was doing most of the talking pointed his filet knife over across the harbor and said, "I wouldn't take that hunk-a-junk thing that he calls "a boat across the harbor, much less out to Horn Island.

"That's the Horn Island Hermit.

"He lives under that boat out on the island much of the time.

"Last year, he was bitten by a moccasin out on the island "and a miracle happened: the snake lived."

To them, he was just the Horn Island Hermit.

I watched my father, just before he left, he turned and faced across the harbor, looked me straight in the eyes, gave me a little wave.

He had seen me there and knew exactly what was happening.

He just wanted to let me know that it was all right.

- In 1965, as Hurricane Betsy was barreling down on the Gulf Coast, Walter rode out to Horn Island and tied himself to a tree.

He wanted to experience the power of that hurricane and experience nature.

- Leaving the high dunes after the storm, he looked down and saw the place where he had always camped was gone.

I mean, washed away.

That was his last trip, because even then, he was already sick.

- [Sissy] And that was very shortly before he died.

- He came to my mother and he was coughing blood.

- [Sissy] And he thought perhaps I had better take him to the doctor.

- So that began his going to different doctors and discovering the lung cancer.

- [Sissy] He went to New Orleans and that's where he died.

- We had a friend there and he took over Daddy's care.

He called his father and he said, "He wants red wine."

And Dr. Frank Schmidt, our old doctor for a million years, said, "Well prescribe red wine!"

(laughing) So he did.

Schmidty took good care of him and he didn't die during the surgery for the cancer.

He died of a heart failure afterward.

- I know Mama said, "Do you want to go over Oschner's with me?

Take your daddy?"

And I said, "No, I don't want to."

She said, "That's okay."

And anyway.

So I didn't get to see him again after that.

I should have gone.

- [Mary] And you know what he said to my mother on the way to New Orleans?

This, I think, is sort of important.

But, you know, my father stopped painting the Community Center before he considered it finished.

And on the way to New Orleans, he said to my mother, "I need to get back to finish the Community Center."

But he never got back.

(Film projector clicking) (Water splashing) - [Narrator] All movement is to invisible music, although few people hear it.

It comes from the sun and the wind and the movement of water and a running rabbit and a crowing cock.

And together, it is a part of a great symphony.

The longer we listen, and the quieter we are, the more we hear.

And when we do hear, we are part of the music instead of an unwelcome interruption.

- [Billy] I understand my daddy today much more than I did when I was a lot younger.

I had my own thing going and that he was an embarrassment, but I understand he was trying to find himself.

And I think in the last couple of years, he really did.

- [John] So much of what he did, we were unaware of.

He was working, but we didn't discover until after his death how much he was working.

- [Lief] My child was born two weeks prior to my father's death.

There was always a sense of the spiritual passing, you know, exchanging of worlds.

- [Narrator] Some walk on earth, others on water.

Still others need clouds to walk on.

- [Mary] We knew that it was painted because momma would send us over with like a bowl of soup or some supper for him, maybe, if she cooked something.

And you could see through the window that the walls were painted, but you could not see the whole thing.

I think he painted his own mural and he did keep it locked.

- They couldn't find the key, so my Aunt Pat, being very resourceful, she she found a hammer, I think.

(Laughter) - [Mary] Momma and Pat went into the Little Room alone.

She said her sister looked up and saw the walls and said, "Creation at Sunrise!"

So my mother was just delighted with that.

And she called it "Creation at Sunrise" too.

- Stepping into the Little Room has always felt like being inside of Walter Anderson, inside of his head and his spirit.

It's always felt like a prayer.

- And then we took another look around and we saw what he was painting light in all its forms.

- [John] I think that the Secret Room was actually a portal that he was trying to create and sit in that little room and be instantly transported into Heaven.

- [DiFatta] Walter created work that was for everyone.

His mother had taught him that if you surround yourself with beautiful things, you'll have a more beautiful life.

And Walter believed that if you were an artist, it was your obligation to create things for people to be surrounded with.

It's one of the reasons why he wanted to do murals.

He did the block prints that he sold for a dollar a foot.

But he also felt that he deserved to keep some things to himself.

- [Browne] In the corner of the Little Room, with a handwritten note of the 104th Psalm, there was a chest.

And inside there were over 2000 watercolors that had never been seen.

- When Pat and Sissy went into the cottage, what they found there was actually the complete works of an artist.

Everything contained within the cottage was essentially his whole life from the block prints and the early oil drawings to his last watercolors on Horn Island.

- [John] How could I be so wrong about my own father?

How could I think that he was the Horn Island Hermit, the town fool, and basically just a bum?

- [Codling] Sifting through the detritus of a life, they are discovering this man and really starting to know him for the first time.

- So one of the largest exhibitions ever of Anderson right after he died at the Memphis Brooks was important to understand.

You know, he had created so much, and these were kind of thrust into the artistic marketplace, but also, some were auctioned.

Many of them were for prices that we would marvel at today.

And just in Anderson fashion, to scatter these to the wind is almost poetic and appropriate, just like he would burn watercolors.

These ended up in other private collections.

- Though Walter Anderson was well traveled, what interested me about him is that he actually spent most of his time traveling deep in one spot in the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the really small region of our country that most people have not even visited.

He chose to spend his time wading in it, walking in it, sleeping in it, completely becoming one with it to understand it at the most spiritual level possible.

And of course, he did that with painting, but he also danced it.

He sang it.

He wrote about it.

He completely used every sense and facility a human can have to merge with it and become one with it, with this region, this special region.

And to me, that makes him unique amongst artists.

- [Browne] He really has not been given his rightful place in American art history.

- [Woman on Radio] Hurricane Katrina cut right through Shearwater-- - Katrina... - [Woman on Radio] ...sweeping away with her tide 15 buildings on the property and much of the family's private art collection.

- The great destroyer on Shearwater, to come back and find nothing, nothing.

- [Mary] The water had been six feet up in the vault.

- [Reporter] What was in the vault?

- [Mary] All of my father's work, the watercolors, the drawings were all stored in the vault.

- [Reporter] What do you think you lost?

- [Mary] Unfortunately, it was the majority of the collection.

- [John] Well, almost everything we had went underwater.

- We moved on and people dug in the stinky stinky mud.

They would come across the bottom of pots, the little round circle, that would mean there's a pot.

- [Mary] There was pottery and all kinds of wonderful things all over the woods and out in the marsh.

- There's a toy chest that he made for me, and we found pieces and bits and pieces here and there and put it back together.

A friend of mine put it back.

We found some of the parts and pieces over across the harbor as far as about a quarter mile away in the marsh.

- [Leif] So people were able to bring things that they salvaged.

- [John] I couldn't accept or understand Katrina for a long time.

I felt that Daddy had a relationship with Providence and I couldn't understand why Providence would come and take away all that had been given to Walter Anderson to share with other people.

- Yeah, intense.

So intense.

- [Mary on Radio] Word for nothing left to lose.

So we should be pretty free at this point, but we got to clean up first.

- [Reporter] Thank you for sharing your experience with us.

- [Mary] Thank you.

- [Dunlap] There are ghost images on other paper, on drying paper.

There's a little watercolor that came off from the other.

It's nature doing what it does best: reproducing in a particular kind of way.

- There's a sense in which Anderson, might be chuckling to himself as if Nature was taking back what it had given him.

- [Narrator] 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?

- [Browne] After Katrina, they had a choice.

They had a choice to either let this define them and be the end of the Andersen legacy on the Gulf Coast, or they could come back from this.

And they chose to come back.

That's the most important thing about it.

It's a human story of resilience.

- And John Anderson said after Katrina said, you know, those watercolors all got wet.

He said, well, they got wet coming back from Horn Island, and it didn't really matter.

- There would just be watercolors laying on top of these grasses.

Of course, that was a miracle in itself.

They believe in what the Anderson legacy means to this region and what it means to the identity of the Gulf South.

- [Dunlap] Well, the Walter Anderson legacy is tied in with the whole Anderson family because they were all of a creative sort, you know, the dancers, the writers, the poets.

- [Leif] Everyone, everyone plays a part.

- [Carolyn] I was looking at a Van Gogh and of course, they had the security all around and all.

And I said, "Oh, Mary, I would love to just touch a Master's work."

And she said, "Mother, you do that every day."

- He made the world a more beautiful place.

- He considered himself Fortune's favorite child.

He really, I think, believed that he had rediscovered Eden.

He was Adam in a hat.

- [Billy] Oh, I love the Museum.

I think it's something that he would have been so proud.

It was the greatest thing that ever happened to the family, I guess, is a museum with Walter Anderson's name on it.

Sooner or later, people are going to recognize Walter Anderson's name just as well as they remember Van Gogh or any other super famous artist.

I mean, he's in that category.

- [John] It was all about making the world a more beautiful place.

- One hospital stay, when Walter decided it was time for him to go home, he tied bedsheets together and repelled himself out of the third story window.

But Walter being Walter, he took with him a bar of Ivory soap.

And so when the hospital workers came to the room the next morning and saw the sheets flapping in the wind, they saw that Walter had drawn birds all the way down the side of the building as he escaped.

- [Narrator] My thoughts are like yellow butterflies.

He who would catch my thoughts must have a net with a long handle.

A man who runs in one direction may be caught by anyone.

But a man that runs in three direction can't be caught.

The realization of form and space is through feeling.

I live and have my being in a world of space and forms.

Which have color and shape.

Consciousness of this means being alive.

- [Female Announcer] A 276-page full-color companion book is available for $49.95 plus shipping and handling.

Order online at www.shopmpbonline.org or call 1-844-874-6874.

Learn more about the Walter Anderson Museum of Art by following them on Facebook and Instagram: @wamamuseum.

- [Male Announcer] "Walter Anderson, The Extraordinary Life and Art of the Islander" is made possible by a generous grant from The Reflection Fund