SadieFaye: Featured Artist of the Week: Charmaine Olivia

Charmaine Olivia

"Obsidian"

While I usually feature artists that I have known about for some time and with whom I have been consistently impressed, this week I have chosen to feature an artist that I just recently stumbled upon. I was immediately captivated and entranced by her work; not only the beauty and unique feminine grace which her pieces portray, but also the depth and breadth of her artistic practice. Charmaine Olivia is a full time artist working in San Francisco. She is self-taught, and works in a variety of media including oil and ink on a range of surfaces, such as various hardwoods.

"Lilith and Lilia" 2011

It seems that all art is created to either portray the ideals of their creator, or to become a personification of the artist and their history – but Charmaine Olivia seems to take this concept to an entirely different level. She isn’t shy about becoming a piece of art herself, and promoting her self-image alongside those images which she creates. Her public persona is a welcome addition to her created works in that it allows the audience to connect with her both through her artworks, and through a sense of familiarity with her as a living, exploring, and creating artist. Charmaine Olivia’s personal involvement with her work and her audience is magnified by her unique technique of using her fingers to blend the colors on her canvas - once again adding a personal touch to her artworks, and to her audience.

"Vampire Ladybird" 2010

Charmaine Olivia delivers a vast multitude of artistic styles to her audience. Her images range from gorgeous silhouettes portraying the classic figure in black against a stark white background, to sketchy renderings of a provocative array of sensual women with various fantastical and natural elements, to detailed paintings of women who seem to be enhanced and not marred by various abnormal physical elements. Her work is a blend of the beautiful and grotesque, the real and the fantastic. The women in her images are delicate, sensual, defiant, and disturbed. Her blend of seductive characters and dark themes of death and destruction enthrall and posess the onlooker.

"Aveline"

A unique feeling and theme runs througout each of these three styles of her work. The silhouettes show a more demure side of Olivia's work - most of them silhouettes of lythe and dainty female figures, hair elegantlly couiffered, and complete with earthy elements or picturesque buildings etched into their torso and necks.

"Little Houses"

Her sketches offer more of a fantastical and unfinished look at the workings of Charmaine Olivia's imagination. They are often a blend of intricately detailed sketchwork, saturated patches of color, and perfectly positioned negative space.

"Emilia"

Her paintings offer a more sensual and morbid image to her audience. Most often she depicts a nude woman who seems to exude sexuality as she fixes a cool gaze upon her audience. These women are often accessorized with intricate tattoos, tousled locks, or costumes straight from the depth of Charmaine Olivia's dark imagination. These women are most often depicted with one or more extra eyes - and in a way that allows the viewer to see right through her skin, exposing the bones upon which she is built. These details are perhaps a play on the idea that eyes are the windows to the soul. The extra eyes allowing the audience to view into the woman in the painting - yet once we see inside, we realize that there is no soul, that she is purely made of flesh and bone.