Megan Olson

Artist Statement

My work is rooted in the study of art history and the ongoing evolution of painting. Influenced by Surrealist automatism, I’ve developed a visual language that merges natural forms, modernist abstraction, and echoes of wild-style lettering. My work at times suggests written communication while remaining intentionally beyond translation, channeling the subconscious through pure abstraction. Elsewhere, abstract visual fields depict almost subconscious imaginings of form and color. Working with the idea of abstraction as a kind of universal language, I hope to push the boundaries of contemporary painting, while addressing themes of interconnectedness, perception, and shared human experience.

Biography

Born in 1971, Olson was raised in a household immersed in art, music, and culture. Her father, a painter, introduced her to the world of surrealism at a young age, exposing her to artists like Wifredo Lam, Yves Tanguy, and Max Ernst, while her mother read Art for Children books to her most evenings. Surrounded by both visual art and music, Olson developed an early appreciation for the power of art and the subconscious mind in creative expression, and became increasingly fascinated by the way sound and rhythm could translate into visual form.

As a teenager in the 1980s, she split her time between New York and Los Angeles, absorbing the energy of both cities. In New York, she was captivated by the raw creativity of the East Village art scene, where contemporary art intersected with the emerging visual language of graffiti. In Los Angeles, she encountered street-based practices in a different context, revealing another dimension of the medium’s scale and presence in the landscape. Experiencing these two distinct expressions would later inform her approach to gesture, surface, and the expansion of painting as a fine art practice.

Olson pursued formal training at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied painting and honed her technical skills. While her academic background provided a solid foundation, she remained drawn to the improvisational and immediate aspects of underground culture. Olson quickly discerned a connection between modernist formalism and graffiti, and this became a defining characteristic of her work.

Her career accelerated when she was invited to the prestigious AICAD New York Studio Program, an opportunity that placed her in proximity to some of the most influential contemporary artists of the time. Her work, rooted in abstraction but shaped by the aesthetics of street culture and music, quickly caught the attention of major galleries. Organic Abstractions, the first of many solo exhibitions at Maxwell Davidson Gallery, solidified her reputation, leading to critical acclaim, a steady stream of commissions, and acquisitions by private collectors and institutions. Art Critic Hilton Kramer said of Olson’s work, "The result of this concentrated attention to the nuances of nature is a pictorial style that’s at once highly abstract and persuasively realist in its fidelity to observed detail."

Building on decades of exploration, Olson has continued to expand her practice through experimentation and collaboration, deepening her engagement with writer culture and musicians to further evolve her approach to abstraction. Her work today reflects both her foundational influences and her ongoing development as an artist. Her paintings, often created through an intuitive process of layering and erasure, embody a sense of movement and rhythm that feels both spontaneous and deeply considered. She remains committed to the exploration of abstraction as a universal language—one that bridges personal expression with broader cultural dialogues.