INDIGO ARTISTS

View Richard Olson's Art

ARTIST STATEMENT
When I am out hiking in the mountains, I am overtaken by the beauty of a moment that cannot be photographed, recorded or even touched. Yet all the senses are intrinsically connected with this beauty. It is the mystery of the experience that captivates me as an artist.

“How can one express and celebrate this mystery?”

Such a question leads into a paradox as well as into an abstraction. How can one draw what cannot really be photographed? Often I draw and paint the shape of a tree or a rock with eyes closed. This allows me to play with textures, colors and images in an entirely new way. I play with symbolisms, images and magic forms, as well as the patterns and shapes of nature; working to keep these compositional forms and colors harmoniously connected. In this creative process, I sense the visceral and the subtle, however faint, of belonging within a greater community of nature, in all its hidden ways, magic and enigma, where even the isolation of the intellect participates.

The interplay and tension, in my work, mixes in with the abstractionism symbolism found in nature and our man made world.
“For me, abstractionism is more about transcending one’s perception of nature rather than transcending nature.”
“It’s about interrelationships.”
The process of painting is a way to move past cultural and personal isolation; past the perceived boundaries of nature’s tooth and claw and the human drama. In this place, one can steal a peek behind the masks of gods. The subject of art cannot really be made explicit, only celebrated.

BIOGRAPHY
I first realized my potential as an artist back in eighth grade after I had sold several large pastels to some of my classmates for a few dollars. I began painting in acrylics when my sister gave me a set of paints as a birthday present. Moving to Boulder, Colorado gave me a new inspiration, passion and discipline for art. A new body of work emerged depicting mostly romantic, dreamlike landscapes and cityscapes. These paintings were shown in several galleries and at juried shows, including several shows at the Denver Art Museum. Evolving from that period my art became more expressionistic. I experimented with black crayons, oil pastels and abstraction.

A few years later I moved from Colorado to Asheville, North Carolina. While living in Asheville I started working in oil pastels. These pastels were shown in four separate shows at the Blue Spiral in Asheville.

During the nineties I began to spend more time with acrylics and started a series of twenty-inch square paintings that has become an ongoing, pictorial journal. From this time to the present, I’ve also done experimental, one of a kind artwork, out of which a second body of abstract landscapes, oftentimes including man made images, has gradually evolved. Both of these bodies of work are being displayed in several galleries both in North Carolina and here in New Mexico.

CURRENT WORKS
There are two bodies of work that I am presently working on. The first one is a series of mostly twenty-inch square paintings originating from compositional sketches done on paper. These paintings are about perception in the context of culture and nature, and about connections, symbolisms and enigmas that arise between the natural and the man made. Often times they are simply an expression of a joy found in playing with texture, color and images merging into abstractionism. Starting from everyday experience, memory and ideas this creative process takes me into a spiritual, gut level realm that is embraced by a kind of ancestral space. It is a mystery more easily celebrated than explained.

The second body of work focuses on the energies and patterns of nature. It’s a meditative exploration into the presence of nature when experienced from a distance, in our modern culture. It’s about what is felt and shared with the earth when inside a building or a room where bare feet do not touch the earth. Here, we are held by memories of times spent in the woods and musing over photographs of places never visited and diagrams of earth strata or of a sprouting seed. What’s inside of me reflects back through the mirror of woodlands, rocks and colors and natural shapes and patterns, where the patterns of nature begin to dance with the patterns of our own cultural architecture. The resulting paintings convey an emotional and intuitive geography, where dreams and waking life converge and are experienced.

SHOWS AND GALLERIES
Indigo Gallery, Madrid, NM. From April ’04 to present.
Paxton & McCall Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM. From July ’03 to December ’03.
Touchstone Gallery, Hendersonville, NC. From November ’01 to present.
Blue Pony Gallery, Charlotte, NC. From October ’01 to October ’03.
Gallery 9, Banner Elk, NC. From August ’01 to present
Asheville Area Arts Council Front Gallery, Asheville, NC. October ’01.
Blue Spiral, Asheville, NC. 1995.

Email Indigo Gallery

Back to Indigo Artists