Kirsten Anderson elevates Lowbrow.
WHO Kirsten Anderson, the 43-year-old founder of Roq la Rue Gallery who single-handedly put Seattle on the map as one of the hearts of the Lowbrow movement. Her 2004 book Pop Surrealism established the term as a definition of the West Coast art uprising with roots in comics, hot rod culture, tattooing and fantastic illustration. In addition to running Roq, now in its 15th year, she’s an editor-at-large at Hi-Fructose magazine and an animal enthusiast with a passion for Africa.
GALLERY QUEEN An Ottawa native, Anderson arrived in Seattle in ’82 and spent her pre-Roq years working at art supply shops and record stores. Her aesthetic interests (“a mashup of technically well-crafted figurative painting crossed with sub-cultural pop weirdness”) coincided with the Lowbrow movement coming out of Southern California at the time, which she wanted to bring to Seattle. “It’s like a switch clicked in my head,” she says. “Literally overnight I went from flighty art chick to serious business.” She’d never been to art school or college, so she taught herself the ropes of running a gallery along the way.
HIGH AND LOW “In a nutshell, I’d call my style ‘glamorous beatnik.’ Utilitarian, but with dark sparkle.” Hard and fast rules? “Only one leopard print thing at a time—otherwise you risk looking deranged instead of chic. And I like to never leave the house without my brows done and eyeliner properly catted.”
STYLE ICONS Juliette Greco, Daphne Guinness, Françoise Hardy, Poison Ivy, Gaye Advert, Toni Halliday of Curve, Debbie Harry, Diana Vreeland, Diana Rigg, Marlene Dietrich. “I’m not gonna lie: I wanted all the clothes from the first season of Downton Abbey. I’m obsessed with Rachael Tyrell’s wardrobe in Blade Runner. I like a bit of tough, punk scruffiness but also the elegance of posh Edwardian gentry.”
UP NEXT Having just moved Roq la Rue from its longtime Belltown location to a new space in Pioneer Square (with Stacey Rozich’s Within Without Me as the new space’s first exhibit), Anderson is relaxing for a minute. More book projects are in the works, along with fundraising projects for animal charities.
Photo by Lauren Max