Oregon based fine artist, Irene Hardwicke Olivieri was born and raised in Southern Texas, spending much of her childhood on the banks of the Rio Grande River. Irene moved to Brazil when she was 17, and lived as an exchange student in Rio de Janeiro.
(Above, Lamp Unto My Feet, detail, oil on wooden door, 77.5 x 28 inches, 2012).
Later, she caught a ride on a cargo boat traveling up the Amazon river, making her way back home through South and Central America.
(Above, Beloved and Bewildered, oil on wooden door, 63 x 32.5 inches, 2006).![]()
Reflection, with respect to Irene’s early life adventures, now echo in the high desert of central Oregon. Observing her natural surroundings, Irene paints, writes and gathers discarded relics from nature’s floor. Demonstrating a soulful connection to the natural world around her, Irene meticulously positions tiny bones, dissected from owl pellets, and fashions them into mosaic nude figures known as her
PaleoGirls. (Paleo Girls featured below).Irene Hardwicke Olivieri’s work is soulfully autobiographical and often embellished with paragraphs of painted text. Irene herself is often painted amongst Mother Nature’s servants, testament to her fascination with caterpillars, waterlilies, succulents and bones polished clean by her dermestid beetle colony. Irene’s work is profound, an open love letter to the secret wonder of her most favorite muse.
Irene Hardwicke Olivieri is occupied with a soon to be released book, museum exhibition and an upcoming gallery presentation of her work manifested over the past three years. Working on her new Los Angeles exhibition, Breakfast in the Forest, Irene shared insight to her new collection.
(Above, Lamp Unto My Feet and Rising Above Resistance).![]()
mM : Living off of the grid and deeply connecting with the natural world around you with no distractions seems like an artist’s dream. How did you originally find yourself adventuring to a raw piece of land in uncharted spaces to create your home and studio? How have your surroundings been incorporated into your work? Do you have any wilderness friends that visit you often?
Irene : I grew up in south Texas, lived in Mexico, Brazil and moved to NYC in my twenties. After 15 years living on the east coast, I found myself yearning to live in a wilder place, to be closer to nature in a more ancient and vulnerable way.
(Above, I Drop Everything When I See You, oil on wood, 55 x 79 inches, 2008-2009).
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I moved to the high desert of central Oregon, and for the past ten years I’ve lived off the grid near the Cascade mountains, surrounded by coyotes, ravens, elk and mountain lions.
On days were time allows for more careful observation, there are some extraordinary smaller creatures: pygmy horned lizards, Jerusalem crickets and bushy tailed woodrats (also known as packrats).
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The packrats are like nature’s little folk artists and their constant desire to collect and arrange and preserve their collection is really exciting to observe. I am endlessly inspired by the wilderness.
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mM : How would you describe your painter’s voice? What type of narrative do you incorporate within your work?
Irene : My favorite part of being an artist is the challenge of how to take an experience, an emotion or a deep primitive feeling and turn it into a painting. What I love is taking something that is not visual and making it come alive.
(Above, Family Secrets Too Heavy to Fly).
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I am painting about love and relationships, obsessions, parts of life which are often subterranean…felt but rarely talked about. My desire is to make paintings which are more than just a treat for the eyes but also to open a window to the mysterious workshop of nature. I trance out trying to combine all of my interests and experiences into paintings.
(Above, Some Kind of Wilderness, 57 x 57 inches, oil on panel, 2010).
mM : In preparing for your new exhibition at Robert Berman gallery in Santa Monica later this Fall, have you decided on a theme or title for your upcoming exhibition?
Irene : My exhibition will be called
Breakfast in the Forest and will include works about many different things: family secrets, self improvement, wild animals, pleas against hunting, a painting about my sadness about the immigration issue and many other things which are close to my heart. There will be drawings, paintings and pieces made from bones and porcupine quills. When hiking in rocky canyons I collect owl pellets. When an owl captures his prey- be it a mouse, a kangaroo rat, etc-he swallows it whole.
(Above, Climbing the Giant and Providing the Pollen).
The owl cannot digest the bones, teeth and fur so the next time he is going to catch a fresh meal, he coughs up a perfectly packed pellet of fur and bones and teeth. I collect these and dissect them, sort and clean the bones and make figures out of them. I call them
PaleoGirls.
(Above, Paleocat).
From a distance she appears to be an alluring female figure but when you get up close you see she is made of the tiny bones of dead rodents. Recently I found a dead porcupine and have been using the quills in some of my paleo pieces.
I also keep a dermestid beetle colony which cleans the flesh from bones so I save dead animals I find and either feed them to the wild ravens and magpies or let the beetles clean them and I used the bones in my work.
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mM : Please share a little bit more about your show at the
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene, OR, as well as the new book project you have in the works:
Irene : I’m very excited that
Pomegranate is publishing a book of my paintings which will be released next year and I will have a book release exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the Univerisity of Oregon in Eugene. I’m working on a plan for the exhibition will travel to several other museums.
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Irene Hardwicke Olivieri autobiographic exhibition
Breakfast in the Forest takes place at the
Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica, CA opening September 7. Irene’s new hardcover book
Closer to Wildness features an essay introduction by
Carl Little and painting overviews written by Irene over 150 pages available in the Spring of 2014. Thank you to
Irene Hardwicke Olivieri for taking time out and sharing.
(Above, Coaxing A Better Me, 30 x 30 inches, oil on metal, 2012).
(Irene Hardwicke Olivieri was featured in Mark Murphy curated exhibitions celebrating Narrative Art, Survey Select and Lucid Dreams).
® 2013 Murphy Design Inc. and Irene Hardwicke Olivieri All Rights Reserved.
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