Rose Olson

Shadows
acrylic on maple veneer
9 x 9 in.

Cycladic Glyphs
acrylic on maple veneer
15 x 15 in.

I refer to my recent paintings as sleepers. They are quiet, almost invisible, until the viewer moves, or the light changes.

I am continuing to paint on wood rather than canvas because I like the smooth hard surface. It has no actual texture allowing the marks I make to be more evident and to contribute to the structure of the work. The layers of color are transparent, giving the viewer the ability to look through the layers to the wood grain; a more intimate interaction and a contradiction to the sense of object integral to three-dimensional boxes.

In fact the formalism in all these paintings is a vehicle for holding contradictions in place. The natural wood grain pattern, soft brush marks and the irregularity of the hand evident in the vertical/horizontal veils of color are held in place by the hard geometry of the square and the mathematics of the final horizontal banding. I try to keep a complexity of parts without losing the whole. For me, this is not a mechanical process. It is both a passionate, and an obsessively calm endeavor.

© Rose Olson