Talented ELF Recipient Expands Her Horizons

Tastes Like cotton Candy by ELF recipient Britta Anderson

“Scape” artist Britta Anderson left North Dakota in 2016 to pursue two goals: excellence in a graduate-level program in studio art and a complete change in scenery! Once accepted at the University of North Carolina, her cousin, Marla Brown, Chapter CF, Glendale, Arizona, presented Britta with the possibility of an Educational Loan Fund (ELF) loan for her pursuit of a Master in Fine Arts (MFA), focusing on studio art.

Britta began her artistic adventures at an early age. An unfinished basement provided concrete walls to use as canvases for markers. She created landscapes of her own using piles of stones and arrangements of twigs. Britta is an avid hiker in all seasons, which takes her into the natural scenes she paints. She has established a career as a landscape painter, first in North Carolina, where she and colleagues arranged exhibitions for showing and selling their works, and then in Missoula, Montana.

Drawn to Montana by childhood memories of summer experiences with family, Britta was active in making Missoula an arts community for both local residents and tourists. She learned how to run a gallery and how to market her own works, as well as the works of others, during the two years she had a part-time job in a downtown gallery.

Britta is eager to communicate her passion for art. “Painting is a soft spot for me. I can sit down and do what I love to do. My paintings are like my little children. I have given them birth, raised them and sent them out into the universe, hoping for the best. I am on an endless journey, and my art is always evolving.”

Britta shares that her greatest personal reward comes from the responses to her work, when a viewer is able to “step into the piece,” and tell their own stories based on what they see. In March 2023, the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota, featured a solo exhibition of Britta’s “scapes.” She presented an artist talk and conducted a workshop focusing on her creative practices. She walked participants through a series of creative exercises and the production of a piece of art based on a work in her exhibition, which continued through early June 2023.

Since March 2023, Britta has welcomed the opportunity to work full-time solely as an oil painter, immersing herself in creating more content for herself, curating commissions for client homes and
being represented at galleries and exhibitions.

Britta has also embraced a recent change in scenery. “It was time to make a switch to a larger city, and I have been making a new home in Lake City, Utah. The landscape here is a breathtaking tapestry of natural wonder, featuring diverse terrain that ranges from warm-hued deserts to snow-capped peaks. I couldn’t resist exploring and connecting with the arts community that continues to form and grow around the Great Salt Lake.”

Now 29, Britta’s reputation has grown and her artworks can be seen not only in prestigious solo exhibitions, but also in commissions for private individuals, collections and commercial businesses and in grants for public commissions such as murals—one of which is on display in downtown Missoula.

Britta is grateful to P.E.O. for the ELF loan, which helped to further her education and which contributed to the development of her craft while she attended the graduate program of her choice. In the spirit of paying it forward, Britta generously donated one of her paintings to a Chapter CF fundraiser for the P.E.O. projects!