Jennifer Olson received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting in 2004 from the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, AB. She currently resides in Victoria, BC and works from her in home studio. Working primarily in oils and watercolours, her paintings often incorporate detailed renderings of photographic imagery with abstract elements. Old buildings and decaying architecture, photographic reproduction, and memory are common themes in her work. Jennifer has exhibited in Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria and Campbell River and has been recognized nationally as a two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Grant for representational artwork.
Jennifer also instructs group classes in acrylic, oil and watercolour.
Feelings of uncertainty towards contemporary society and its mediated experiences, constant technological change, and lack of tradition, led to my interest in man-made constructions being reclaimed by nature. Old buildings, decaying architecture, photographic reproduction, and memory are common themes to my work. My paintings and artistic process explore the relationship between photographic imagery, absence and reconstruction.
I am drawn to the undeniable power of the natural world, which is still able to break down walls and grow vines through bricks, despite our constant efforts to tame and control it. It is this natural deconstruction process that interests me, both esthetically and conceptually. I am intrigued with the look of buildings that are continually exposed to the elements until they begin to form a harmony and natural relationship with the environment. I am also interested in using the artistic processes of photography and painting to reconstruct and preserve something which is lacking in modern culture.
My main interest in photography is as a mnemonic device, used to preserve, construct and even create memory. Photographic images inherently point to the absence of their subject, creating a mediation or void between the subject and the viewer. In this sense, photographs can be directly connected to a sense of loss, representing the lack of the subject depicted in the image. By reconstructing photographic images of crumbling architecture as painted illusions, I am addressing the absence of the actual subject in our culture.
Through deliberately painting photographs as objects and thereby creating an image of an image, rather than an image of reality, I also consider how photographs function as images and how paintings function as a mode of representation. Through my use of a soft, slightly blurred style of painting, the viewer becomes aware that they are observing a representation of a slightly out of focus photograph, rather than a detailed depiction of the actual architecture. My laborious, obsessive painting process becomes almost ritualistic, reiterating my ideas of disillusionment, loss and nostalgia. It is as though I am reconstructing a new reality through the act of painting.
Abstract, organic line drawings often run through my images to reference the flat, two-dimensional space of the canvas and make the viewer conscious of the photographic illusion that has been created. These abstract elements also reference the initial drawings made on the canvas and allude to the process of constructing a representational painting. My detailed, almost mechanical renderings of photographic imagery, combined with organic, abstract elements, also closely parallel the concept of the natural reclaiming the artificial.
These ideas of photographic representation, reconstruction, and nostalgia, are the conceptual basis for creating my paintings. Through my painting process, I am able to explore the use of images as a means to reconstruct memories, new realities and the natural world back into our lives.