The images I paint are conjured from many different elements. Usually starting with a dream or memory, I then ‘mix’ it with source material which accumulates in my studio. This could be anything from images found in news media, films, patterns found in nature, children’s book illustrations, family archives, imagined landscapes, art history, or old photographs.
I reference the material during the process, but over time the paintings take shape of their own accord. I let chance leave pigment traces of oil paint on the canvas so that abstract areas form.
Symbolism emerges from this ‘visual residue’ after sometimes adding elements of figuration. The original starting point is only tangentially referenced in the final image.
The viewer may be reminded of the intimate and profoundly unpredictable experience of dreaming.
My work taps into the natural tendency in all of us to create narratives in response to the visual world. The viewer then projects their own associations in the tones and forms.
I don’t paint other people’s stories per se, but my narratives balance on the fine thread of the para fictional world. Between the real and imagined; the frightening and the beautiful. It’s a precarious place we all share and inhabit; where the politics of emotion and memory prevail.
Olivia Streeton
Olivia was born in London to Australian parents in 1973. She moved to the Far East at the age of four with her mother and stepfather. Her schooling began in Hong Kong and ended in Japan in 1991. She then moved to London in 1992 to attend the Wimbledon School of Art Foundation Course. She completed her Master of Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2002.
She worked part time as gallery assistant at England & Co Gallery from 1996 to 2005. After spending time in Italy through the 2000s, she settled permanently in London with her son, born in 2009. Olivia has had studios in the Kindred Studio complexes since 2015, partaking in the Open Studios and gallery shows every year to the present day.
Her childhood, spent in China and Japan, has left a lasting sensibility in her work. Growing up in Asia and travelling throughout the region as a child enhanced a sense of ‘otherness’ in her; a magic realism encountered in the day to day. The experience of being educated in international schools, (which harbour their own histories and politics), impacted her perspective. The sense of ‘other’ has been a constant companion, even in London today. Her work, subsequently, is influenced by memories, dreams and historical narratives. She seeks out the uncanny and draws inspiration from subconscious and spiritual phenomena; elements of the natural (and supernatural) worlds mixed with the strange repetitions of human symbolism and history.
