OLIVIA KUO

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."

artist statement

I have always been in awe of nature and its beauty. I draw inspiration from the elements of life and seek to create art that is alive with feeling through the movement of the brushwork and bursts of luscious colors. Much like how time plays a role in shaping natural sceneries, I dedicate myself to create each piece through layers of paint. With each stroke, I add my emotions to the canvas, and with each layer I instill my memories, resulting in every piece rich with history and my personal story.

I have recently started painting using with my fingertips; finger painting feels natural. When I use only my fingers, I feel closer to my canvas, and I have more control on how to apply and move the paint. For me, painting is like meditation. Everything else falls away, and I am present in the moment suspended outside of time. All worry is gone, and I get absorbed in my work as it evolves. I say it grows because I don’t know what the painting is going to be until completed, it’s an adventure for me, not an intellectual pursuit; it’s more a visual and emotional endeavor.

I choose to explore these ideas through my relationship with the medium; the materials and methods become the dominant driver in my work. I begin without predetermined conclusions, but with the pure intention to respond. Allowing my internal landscape to come forward, I work intuitively and abstractly, with as little self-censoring as possible, drawing from this vast, boundless, immeasurable space.

My work has described as primitive modernism. I find this description accurate, as I’m searching for a quality in my painting that feels earthy, rooted and evocative of another place and time. The art evolves, not consciously, but rather from a sensibility that pokes its way along. I’ve always responded to transitional beauty, poignancy, and impermanence. I hope that my work can convey to the viewer this truthfulness of our external world, where entropy is always in action, transforming and stripping away what seems permanent.