Wed, March 27: The Gallery, Store, and Offices are closed today due to flooding around the Torpedo Factory.

Solo Artist Interview Series: Tess Olson
Share

Solo Artist Interview Series: Tess Olson

Date

-

Time

-

Join Art League Communication Specialist Julia Chance in a live Zoom interview with September Solo Artist Tess Olson.

About the Artist:

Cultivating Imperfection, a solo exhibit by oil painter Tess Olson, is a collection of abstract work inspired by the subtle vibrations of the natural world. Waves of water, light, energy, and sound emerge in mysterious patterns on richly layered canvases and suggest secret shapes that hide and hum beneath the surface. The exhibit will be on view at The Art League Gallery September 10 – October 4, 2020.

Olson describes her paintings as “full of scars and defects, built-up over a long time.” The artist emphasizes the importance of her technique, which allows for intuitive exploration of color, line, and shape. Olson’s work is seductively ambiguous, tugging at the mind and bewitching the eye. Like a memory, like a bridge, her paintings lead us across the gap between certainty and wonder. Viewers might sense mountains shifting inside Olson’s paintings, or gullies quaked into being. Earth’s sacred vessels, sacred movements, sacred openings.

Her palate is a superb mix of earth tones and energetic jeweled hues. In Visitor’s Wake, the colors were chosen as carefully as river rocks: layers of jasper, olive, shell, and umber form the ripple left behind from a passing Mandarin duck.

Cultivating Imperfection is an ode to process, a celebration of entropy and evolution. Olson reminds us that as we grow, our changes are often imperceptible, and revealed only when we are considered in our entirety.

Tess Olson received her B.F.A in painting from Syracuse University in 1982. Her lengthy exhibition history features numerous awards, including two Best-in-Show Awards, in 2017 and 2018, from The Art League Gallery. Her work has been exhibited across the Mid-Atlantic Region, including Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Delaware. Currently, Olson lives and works in Northern Virginia.

Your help is needed to support The Art League’s future!

Your support of The Art League reflects where you envision the world of creativity will take us tomorrow. Are you ready to map the future for your — and your community’s — creative life?