CHRISTINE OLMSTEAD: WHAT IS AN ARTIST?
While we were both in residence at Chateau Orquevaux in May 2022, I had the opportunity to sit down with award-winning conceptual and abstract mixed-media artist Christine Olmstead while she was working on her collection A Little More. We chatted about her history, her art and her creative process. And she was kind enough to allow me to delve a little deeper into what she’s looking for in her life and in her career, and how she plans to get there.
Okay, so let’s dive in. What is an artist?
I think an artist is someone who has the ability to make connections and create something new from many sources. And I think that you can be an artist in every area. You could be a math artist, you could be a financial artist, you could be a writer, a word artist. I think that the term artist connotes creativity and the ability to see things and make connections and create something new in whatever your craft is.
And what makes Christine Olmstead an artist?
What makes me an artist? The complete desperation and lack of ability to do anything else. It felt like the only thing that I could do, the only option.
Talk us through the formal training you’ve had, and also any self-taught training.
My mum taught us traditional art history growing up. She wanted my brother and me to be able to understand and recognise art movements as well as try to recognise an artist based on their stroke palette or subject matter. So growing up, she taught us a lot. And then, we both did art lessons, learning charcoal and pencil portraiture, in elementary and middle school. And then, in high school I was doing still life in oil with a teacher. So that’s most of the training that I’ve had. In college I did some graphic design and illustration as well. And then I did go to grad school for an MFA in the studio and painting, but I dropped out of that.
Why?
Um, a few reasons. I was in the middle of it when covid hit, and my husband was laid off, so I was the only one earning for a period of time. And it didn’t seem financially wise to keep going, especially not knowing what the future with covid was going to hold. So I dropped out of the program for financial reasons, but also I wasn’t really getting what I wanted out of grad school.
How long did you do it for?
About a year. Yeah, it wasn’t the experience that I wanted. And I’m usually a finisher, and I have a really hard time walking away from things and not finishing the things that I start. So it was a big deal for me to drop out of grad school.
Did it feel like the right decision?
Yeah, it felt like the right decision. And I might go back. I think I would transfer maybe, and try to seek the experience that I was hoping for.
What kind of experience were you looking for?
I think what I was looking for in grad school was connections, and camaraderie, as well as being able to study under people that I’ve really respected. And it wasn’t that I didn’t respect my teachers. I did. It was just that it was also a hybrid program, so I wasn’t in studio on campus, and I think that was also part of the reason why it just wasn’t right. Because I think so much of learning is best in person. Because it’s the little conversations, it’s the small comments, it’s the passing remark from a professor, it’s the stopping by their office or their studio. To me that’s the richness and that’s where deep learning happens, and it just wasn’t happening. So I think that’s what I was looking for.
Tell me about something new that you are working on, or planning to work on, when this current series is done.
I always have like 10,000 series ideas, and there are so many things that I’m always experimenting with in my mind, and then also in my home studio. This current one is definitely more commercially focussed because I tried to mix it up and make sure that there’s something that’s easily consumable. And then, maybe later in the year I’ll do a series that’s just for me. But this one is in conversation with the previous series that I did in 2020, at the beginning of covid when there was a lot of hopelessness and fear. Obviously we were all going through it, and so I created a series, There’ll Be More as the only response that I knew how to have. Which was to try to take hope and tell people there will be more goodness again, there will be more hope again, there will be more play. There’ll be good things again one day. And I think that was the only way that I knew how to deal with it, to believe that it would be okay.
So what is this current series about?
So this one is sort of the outworking of that. Obviously covid isn’t over, but we sure are acting like it is. And because this residency was postponed, I made that series right after I learned that no-one was going anywhere for a long time. And now that I’m here at Chateau Orquevaux, it’s sort of like some of those good things that I promised you are coming to fruition. And so this series is called A Little More, and it’s just some of those good things, some of those hopeful things. And they’re not perfect and they’re still shrouded in some darkness because we all lost a lot, you know? But they are meant to be a little bit of, not a mournful celebration, but just a coming out, a little bit. If that makes sense. I don’t know if that makes sense.
It makes total sense. So for the next series, do you think you would build on that again or do something completely different?
I have something completely different in mind. I feel like I need a mental break and reconfiguration. I think once I come back home from the residency, I need to re-organise my thoughts. And I’m also in the middle of building my new studio, renovating it and getting it in place. So I think that when I get home, I need to re-settle, re-digest everything that happened here, while I market these pieces, get my studio set up and re-evaluate what I want the next thing that I’m going to bring into the world to be. But, we’ll see.
Tell me about your studio.
So my husband and I bought a house almost a year ago now, and it has what used to be a horse barn on the property. So we’re renovating it. There was electricity and central air but we’re adding running water, we’re drywalling. We’re doing all of that, and transforming it into my studio. The last studio space I had was in my home and it just started getting really claustrophobic. I work really big so I’m really excited to have a space that’s outside of my home, but just down the road. Just a little bit of separation.
My dream for the studio is that it’s also sort of, not a community space, but a place where I can host events and other artists and where people in my community, other artists or friends can say, “Hey, I’m going to bring over a bottle of wine and let’s talk”, or “I want to show you my work”, or “Hey, can I see what you’re working on?” And, you know, maybe even do dinners in the studio. And I would love for it to be a mixed use space where so many things can happen, and there can be deeper connections. A multi-purpose space, but also my studio.
That sounds absolutely incredible, and it kind of leads onto my next question. What goals do you have for the future and what would you like to achieve artistically and professionally?
Career wise, goals wise, I mean wouldn’t we all love to be in The Met or something. But you know, to be in a museum, if that sort of thing were to ever happen, you know, it’ll probably be when I’m dead. I don’t anticipate that necessarily in my lifetime. I think that’s a very big goal to have. But I want to continue to be able to be sustained and supported by my work. That’s a goal. I want to bring people together and give them a piece of hope, mostly.
“OH MY GOSH YOU GUYS ARE SO SERIOUS, DO YOU EVER HAVE ANY FUN!?!”
I like that you want to give people hope. And I think it’s quite noble of you really, because there’s a lot of it lacking, in the world right now.
Yeah. I would say that I lack it a lot, and that’s probably why I want to try to give it to the people.
Are you giving yourself some hope too?
Yeah, I’m trying to. I’m trying to.
Tell me about someone who has inspired you artistically, whether it’s someone that you know, or another artist.
First and foremost is my mum, just because she gave us a lot of tools growing up, to understand art. When I was about two and a half years old, I made a whole series of tulips. They were abstract tulips. And I made hundreds of these things, and it was because she had told me about the impressionists. My mum loves impressionism.
You were two and a half?
Yeah. And so she was showing me Monet and I thought, oh, I can do that. At two and a half [laughs]. And so I did one stripe of black paint, and then either green, or green and yellow, over top. And then the tulip bulb colour was red with a white stripe over, or pink with red over. And so, I understood the basics of what she was talking about, but I made so many of these, and she framed one of them and she still has it in her bathroom. And that’s a silly little thing, but because I know how much she values art, it meant so much to me that she thought that one of my tulips was worthy of being framed. And that inspired me to think that what I make could be valuable.
And then the other artists that inspired me, I really love Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. I remember seeing Frankenthaler’s piece Jacob’s Ladder, and it just brought me to tears . And the way Joan Mitchell uses paint and texture, just beautiful. She’s one of my favourite artists, if not my favourite. I think her works are beautiful, and her pieces are the ones that have moved me the most. I like Mitchell’s painting style more, but I do love Frankenthaler’s creativity.
There were some things about Joan Mitchell, like she’s also synaesthetic, and the way she approaches painting is the way that I was approaching painting before I knew about her methods. In the sense that she would paint music, and she would paint a poem, and she gives bodies to intangible things. And that’s the way that I was viewing the world and my work, as well. Can I give a body to a concept or an idea? Like what would love look like? Or what would peace look like. You can see the outworkings of those things in the world, but if it did exist, what would it look like? So I loved that. Not that I’m anything like her, because she’s prolific and amazing, but once I learned about her it was like, we thought in the same ways.
You have synaesthesia?
Yeah.
Can you tell me more? I’m so fascinated by this.
So, I have a couple of different kinds, but the one that is the most fun, and that I enjoy the most and use the most in work, is sound to sight synaesthesia. So when I hear music, I see it as colour and movement. And honestly they’re not all really pretty. Some of them are… well, it depends on the music. So I don’t paint songs, because a video would be better, animation would be the best medium for that, I think. But what I do use synaesthesia for in my work is for colour inspiration, because different genres of music or different pieces of music in particular tend to have overarching colours, right? Like one of my pieces, if you look at this, you’d think mostly blue, but of course there are other colours dancing around in there. So that’s the way a song is. It’s maybe mostly blue, but it moves with other colours too.
It’s a dynamic thing?
Right, right. Exactly. So when I listen to music while I paint, I usually choose music based on what palette I know it’s in.
And is it the same colour every time you hear a song?
It’s always the same palette, but it might move differently, you know? And depending on what you’re paying attention to in the song, you can focus in on different colours, or movements. So I mostly use it for colour inspiration, but it’s a fun way of existing.
What advice would you give to yourself when you first started pursuing art, and would that differ to advice that you would give to somebody else that was starting a career in art?
I’m definitely a believer in individual solutions, so I wouldn’t give the same advice to everyone, because I think everybody has different values and everybody wants something different out of life. So I don’t think that advice is universal.
So what advice would you give to yourself?
To myself, I think I would say slow down. Yeah, I think I would tell myself to slow down. It’s hard to tell yourself that when you’re young though, you know, because there’s so much pressure and you feel like you have to be something and do something. And there’s also pressure to provide for yourself. So I wish I could have told myself to slow down. I think that’s the main thing I would say. Just go slower.
Do you push yourself?
Yeah. Yes. I’m not good at resting, I don’t think. So yeah, try to slow down.
