Rebecca Olsen
American Artist, Born in Florence, Italy 1975
As a multi-media artist my work is abstract with a strong relationship to geometry. Mark-making and line are generally more important to me than color and I typically use a restrained color pallet. I draw my inspiration from the urban city. As a subject, the city intrigues me; both as a symbol of man’s potential but also of the endless development that may ultimately overrun the earth.
Many of my images can be interpreted as seen through a telephoto lens that is drawing in and out upon an urban landscape. In some works, you may see the detail of a wall, or the wall itself. In others, the city skyline, or building, drawing further away, the city becomes a map. The images are never of one city in particular but of the idea of a city, the images are always highly abstracted suggesting rather than illustrating. The lines that make up the images are always from numerous perspectives, pushing against strict representation and creating the image in blocks of color and line.
The purely abstract images, of which there are many in my work, relate to the walls of the city and its lines, shadows and textures. I have been archiving and cataloging photographically the walls of the city (Florence) for nearly 10 years and they have heavy influenced the mark making as well as the surface of the canvas. In my more recent work I have been interested in representing many perspectives of the city in one image, much like the eye and brain gather many images and information to form an snap shot of reality, so too I wish to translate these images to form a sense of the “city” and city-ness.
The process of editing, re-editing and layering images and ideas is foremost to my process. If I am working in drawing, painting or printmaking, I am thinking of how to transpose layers, and how those layers can be perceptible, providing depth spatially but also historically to how the work was made. Experimentation and chance are an important part of my process. I approach each work as though it is a problem to be solved. Working both with spontaneity and chance, I prefer not to overly plan my end result but to work until the painting, drawing or print reveals itself and is finished.
