Live Panel: Studio Setup & Tour

Acrylic | Watercolor | Mixed Media

Teaching is my life, paired with painting and moving through the world creatively. Working with other painters to help them identify, refine, and express their version of beautifully different or compelling is one the passions I hold most dear. As a self-taught artist of 18 years, I came about this journey of art through unique circumstances and found that it held great potential for helping me learn to connect and express how I feel about my human experiences through the incredible combination of paint, pigment, and paper.

When I knew I needed a style I didn’t have an academic program, professor, or mentor to help me understand how to develop that, so I turned inward and committed a year to studying and defining what gives an artist their ‘style.’ That was the most important year of my life professionally because it equipped me with understanding the head space, skills, and heart connection that every artist needs to curate their own visual language and use it to express a narrative of their choice.

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Oil | Pastel | Acrylic

The driving force that helps and encourages the work that Olaf does, comes from the love and support of his wife Tracey. Olaf’s objective as an artist is to remain an amateur. “In the mind of an expert, there are few possibilities. In the mind of an amateur there are endless possibilities.” says Olaf. “I will paint an image and convey an emotional context that is accessible to the viewer. This is achieved by several methods. I sometimes like to use expressive and thick impastoed brush strokes, or soft blended strokes, rendering a sense of movement and texture, giving the painting a life of its own. My interpretation of color also sets the dynamic mood and feelings in my paintings. Finally the tones of my paintings are often ranging from the darkest to the lightest, in an effort to achieve maximum drama. This combination of information is created in a spontaneous and intuitive fashion. I am constantly in search of more of the elements of nature that have inspired me in the past, thus, continuing the cycle of inspiration and creation.” Since 1981, Olaf had the benefit of working with some of the best people in the industry.

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