[1][2] Anderson received both undergraduate and graduate art degrees from the University of Iowa (1940 and 1941)[3] where he studied painting with Grant Wood and Philip Guston.
During World War II, Anderson initially worked in Washington D.C. as an illustrator for the Ordnance Department of the Pentagon, and later as a designer for the Civil Aeronautics Bureau.
[3] After receiving his graduate degree in 1941, Anderson taught briefly at Iowa and then at Duluth State College before moving to Washington, D.C.
In the fall of 1947 he accepted a full-time position in the Department of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he taught design, lettering and watercolor.
[3] Starting in 1948 and during the next fifteen years, Anderson's paintings were exhibited frequently in the Midwest; he received about forty regional and national awards.