I’m Serious - Acrylic on Canvas 60'' x 40''

For Sonja Olson, art is the medium through which she can broadcast her messages.  Her canvases are couched in wit and irony – these bright, clean and undeniably cheery canvases hold stark messages about the state of the environment and the futility of consumerism, but the message is delivered through fun.  Drawing on pop art, Olson paints images that are associated with mechanical image-making processes.  Acrylics are skillfully used to create screen-print effects and comic-book style graphics on canvas.  With flat, intense colors, sharp lines and playful inversions, the images are also repeated in series in many pieces, reinforcing the graphic quality of the work. Olson uses these series to trace a path of exploration through the work and in the process depict the repetitiveness of modern consumer culture.

These works look for the viewer to engage with them.  Whether it is in contemplating the series of images in a work (a pear that is consumed over four canvases, colorful SmartCars from various angles), reading the writing on the canvases or noticing the relation between the image and its title, Olson’s work is truly striking and individual.

An art  teacher for twenty-five years, Sonja Olson lives and paints in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

www.sonjaolson.com
www.Art-Mine.com/ArtistPage/Sonja_Olson.aspx