Bobbie Oliver Solo Exhibition 2013 :Olga Korper Gallery

Bobbie Oliver

June 1, 2013 – June 29, 2013

For the past 30 years or more, my studio practice has been that of an abstract painter involved in the alchemy and chemistry of paint and its ability to correspond and transcend to a subtle world of imagery that attracts me. This imagery mainly comes from the act of painting itself, though I am clearly influenced by any number of things from Chinese and Japanese calligraphy to Indian textiles. My early Canadian beginnings in Windsor, Ontario were spent around the banks of Lake Erie discovering fossils and rocks, which has had a great influence on my art and archaeology interests. This interest in nature has stayed with me in my work and manifests itself through my interest in chance and accident. Though I have worked with many different materials over the years, my subject matter has remained constantly in the realm of tactility and abstraction. I am not interested in stories but in creating atmospheres that attract the eye through subtlety, nuance and immediacy.

I enjoy working without knowing what the end will be. Often I begin a work with chance marks or spills and go from there. Everything is in flux and though I might take a long time to finish a painting, I stay very close to it and try to understand the goings on in the painting itself, taking into account every slight mark, drip and nuance. Everything I feel will keep it alive goes into it: dense forms, delicate forms, fine lines, more pigmented color, thick and thin paint. This accumulation keeps me interested and engaged and becomes the real subject of the painting. Though I constantly change things I never actually banish something entirely so it is all there to be seen – the layers of working, changes and transformations.