Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe) works in drawing and painting to create vividly intricate imagery that incisively pursues and maps the mosaic entanglement of cultural narratives and institutional authority as they relate to objects based on the merit of possession, posterity, and display. She frequently grapples with issues of decolonization, and in recent work she analyzes land narratives, assimilation metaphors, and Indigenous Futurisms. Carlson was first taught the fundamentals of art by her father, a hyperrealist painter, and was influenced by the abstract expressionist George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe).

Her current focus includes both symbolic and more specific references to landscape features that continue to hold relevance to Indigenous people. Carlson says: “I feel like most of my paintings are landscapes, or seascapes where all of this debris has washed up on shore. Then over the years, I’ve started layering and stacking up landscapes. For example, the pieces in one of my series are four stacked landscapes tall, and I have other works that are ten stacked landscapes with these almost-prismatic lines and geography going through it. I think maybe, in a crude way, it's my way of illustrating that the land is stacked upon land. There's story upon story upon story, in a singular space.”

Alongside prints and multidisciplinary projects, Carlson makes large-scale, multi-part works on paper through a combination of drawing and painting. These highly intricate and graphic compositions coalesce into expansive, disorienting scenes that evoke futuristic and, at times, apocalyptic worlds. In addition, Carlson has created large-scale cite specific works in Minneapolis and Chicago. An exhibition by Carlson made specifically for the University of Michigan Museum of Art opened in 2022.

Carlson’s work has been acquired by institutions such as the British Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. She was a 2008 McKnight Fellow and a 2016 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant recipient. Today, Carlson lives and works in Chicago and maintains ties to Minneapolis.