A new featured Postindustrial Artist from rural Pennsylvania explores the cumulative effects of life on a creator’s work.
One of the constants, for all of us in life, is in searching for structure and reacting to that evolving structure in order to define ourselves.
Voltaire’s words “We must cultivate our garden” (Il faut cultivar notre jardin) have become my mandate to take responsibility for the composition of my life just as I endeavor to organize the composition of my paintings.
Everything one experiences can affect an image, as a work of art makes intangibles tangible. The life lived and the art produced become a daily dynamic between me and the “guests” who enter my life, regardless of the length of their stay: painting, art history/history, teaching, travel, family, cooking, reading, making music, exercise, learning languages, and dialogue with others.
Seed acrylic on canvas 60 x 40 inches
In addition, the manifestation of these life attributes is organized on the stage of painting, in a “place.”
A horizon defines this: a simple line that crosses the width of the image and delineates space, direction, and gravity, an environment. All of the paintings in this exhibition carry a horizon line. This is familiar to all of us and gives the viewers a common point of departure.
What happens next is quite the contrary as it demands a certain individualism in finding one’s own path through the work.
The path may well be very different at the next viewing. There is self isolation in this that is not unlike walking alone into a field or realizing an unexpected moment of fascination with a new discovery.
Pause and reflection. All of this is lived through a “sense of place.”
Artist Chuck Olson at work in his studio / Image courtesy of the artist)
We live in difficult, uncertain times. One faces the news as one attempts to craft well-being in a “yin/yang” of two extremes.
They are in evidence here in this exhibition; objects and form set in places to be considered and reconsidered.
Chuck Olson’s “Sense of Place” exhibit will be featured at the ZYNKA Gallery in Pittsburgh October 24 to December 20.
