Mars Black Horse

Andoe received his Bachelors of Fine Arts and Masters of Fine Arts degrees from the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. In 1993 he became an Honorary Chair of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Oklahoma. This award is among the many accomplishments achieved by this Oklahoma native. Andoe has exhibited in solo and group shows in museums and galleries across the United States and in Canada, Italy, and Finland. His works are represented in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri, the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the Detroit Institute of Art in Michigan. Andoe has mastered a reductive painting technique that does not require brushes. He selects unprimed canvases that he coats with white gesso before covering entirely with thick oil paint. He incises the outline of the form of his subject with precision while the paint is still wet. Next, he wipes most of the paint off. This allows the image to slowly appear as the coarse weave of the canvas beneath is revealed. Using his fingertips to rub paint back onto the surface of the canvas and then wiping some of it back off again makes his unique works extremely tactile. Andoe, alone, uses this method of painting.