"The paintings that I create are a direct reflection of the experience I am having. Sometimes I think I 'should be' creating work that has the lofty goal of educating the people who I project need to be taught something valid and weighty in this world but that does not seem to be the intent of this work. Actually, there is very little intent. I simply see something that creates movement, stirs something that feels like California Poppy orange or a particular note in a song that brings forth tears of recognition. A giddiness rises in the chest and a “yes” that is curious about a mother holding her child to her chest, or the way light comes through a blackberry bramble.

  By being present I am aware of hundreds of times a day when this movement occurs and as a way to express the excitement, I am moved to paint. If someone gleans something from that it is of their own accord, through their own precious movement.

  There is an unspeakable, (although I will try), feeling that arises when I see line being used in art. It seems to try to define what cannot be defined, what could never be truly known. The same thing seems to happen when negative space is used to try to define something in a painting. What is it that I think I want to know? Form? Weight? Size? How much definition do I need? Or is it the “attempt” to define something, that really creates all the hubbub that makes me sit and stare at a Robert Motherwell, perched on the edge of tears, for 45 minutes?

  There is not any attempt to charade the work that I create. It is a process, a beautiful, wondrous unfolding that I cannot even understand or take credit for. The gesso goes down, then the under-painting, then the line through pencil and scratches, and then the painting. This is how it works, how it is created and there is nothing to glaze over and create the illusion that I “know” what I am doing." 

Olivia Mae’s evident need to create through art began in the crib and perhaps even before, as she inherited her Grandfather’s, (who painted as an Abstract Expressionist), predisposition to live the artist’s lifestyle. She attended Columbus College of Art and Design’s five-year BFA program where she majored in Illustration but took every Fine Art course that could be squeezed into her semester’s tuition. After working for five years in the LA film industry as a conceptual designer, the pull to create her own work through the means of painting was too much to resist. She cut up her credit cards and moved to a cabin in the mountains of Utah to paint, fulltime.

In 2007, Olivia Mae, formally known as “Holly Mae”, moved to Seattle to pursue her creative endeavors in the Northwest.  In 2008 she lived in Malawi (Africa) for 4 months while painting the amazing people. She is currently working on a show of Malawian figuratives that are large 10’ paintings that will be shown at the Turchin Fine Art Center in North Carolina, Fall - 2009.  She has been working and playing, painting fulltime, for ten years. In that time her paintings have won national awards, shown in museums and shows all over the country.