Chuck Olson

The region of Western Pennsylvania has literally formed the background of my development—my birth, my upbringing, my education and my work. As an American painter educated within the last quarter of the 20th century, the powerful example of Abstract Expressionism, which marked the self defining American break with European modernism, pulled me into its energy and provided me with a way of seeing with which to respond to my experience. Part of that experience was also taken intellectually with the importance of history and its accompanying conscience which allowed for the development of imagery based on a hybrid of gestural abstraction and representation of forms gleaned from the past.

Perhaps my earlier declaration as an “American painter” should contain an asterisk as I have a French wife and a Franco-American life that wonders about where it belongs. This restlessness, caused by cultural collision, allows me the potential, I believe, to constantly reflect on how one sees, constructs life, and then proceeds to take it all in. It is in spending time in France that affords me an opportunity to understand the “American” and the “French” is examined within the context of time spent in Western Pennsylvania. There is something of American energy and French mystery that drives me. This Franco American duality is also there in my definition as artist and professor. Some think that it shows and perhaps it shows best within my work.

~Chuck Olson

Monotypes

CV

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