John Anderson was born in Chicago, Illinois. In 1954 he attended the University of Illinois in Urbana, where he decided he wanted to become an artist. He studied painting at the Mexico City College from 1956 to 1957, and in 1958 moved to California to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. After a chance encounter with Gordon Onslow Ford, Anderson became his studio assistant and Onslow Ford became his artistic mentor. Anderson is the author of Beginner's Beginning, written in 2001. He has also served as a guest lecturer in the Department of Arts and Consciousness at John F. Kennedy University, Berkeley.

Anderson has shown his work at a number of exhibitions including: Basel, Switzerland, 1978; Museum of Contemporary Art, New Delhi, India, 1987; and John F. Kennedy University Art Gallery, 1997. His first major solo exhibition occurred at Weinstein Gallery in July 2009, which art critic Garrett Caples reviewed for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, noting that Anderson "merits the designation of 'master.'"

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