Without complete vision of what this album cover would look like, I was committed to using the image of a crab, a universal symbol of cancer.

When I found a photograph of some crabs painted by Walter I. Anderson in "New York" magazine, I began to look deeper into his work. Immediately, however, I knew it was to be Walter Anderson's work that I should use on the cover. Coincidences began to materialize beginning with the realization that I had studied this man's work quite in depth a decade before while in school in Southern Mississippi.

While browsing through a bookstore in New York, I stumbled upon a brightly colored book in the art section which turned out to be "The Horn Island Logs of Walter Anderson", a journal illustrated with paintings by the author made as he sojourned to the coastal islands of Southern Mississippi. It was in this book edited by Redding S. Sugg, Jr. (the logs and introductory writings of which are very interesting, by the way!) that I found not just a crab, but a Ghost Crab. Besides being a beautiful and richly colored watercolor, the image presents ghostly symbolism as the shell of a 'soul'. Rhetorically, I thought, how perfect is this?

...About Walter I. Anderson

Walter Inglis Anderson was born in New Orleans, LA on September 29th, 1903. As a lad, he had studied in New York, New Orleans and finally completed his educational course in Philadelphia where he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Afterwards he traveled to France to embrace the art of Paris and the Gurdjieff 'new age' movement.

Meanwhile, his family had settled in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a place which was to become Walter's destiny. After a quasi-settling period of marriage and a business with his brother creating figurines, Walter had bouts with mental illness that resulted in self-admittance to mental hospitals. Afterwards, he began the periodic sojourns by rowboat to the Mississippi coastal islands, primarily Horn Island, where he remained for weeks at a time, painting nature with watercolors and typewriting paper. He bore the elements and seemed content to eat rice while he captured with brilliance the mystical qualities of gulf coast flora and fauna.

Walter Anderson died of cancer on November 30th, 1965.

Walter Anderson's art is rich in color and delicate, yet vivid in its celebration of life. There is pronounced symmetry in his work which reminds me of Escher. Ken had an interest in Escher's work and I think he would have appreciated Walter Anderson.