Statement

“I paint multi-layered landscapes that challenge traditional pictorial space and demonstrate alternatives to linear time. My process simulates disruptions that cover, excavate, and fragment the environment. I begin with a fully rendered image referencing Hudson River School paintings, Impressionism, Kentucky wilderness, and documentation of climate events. The paintings then undergo a succession of added layers. Between each step, I adhere a temporary veneer, like vinyl or masking tape, which preserves early iterations that will be revealed alongside their later completed counterparts. Once cured, the process repeats indefinitely. As they progress, recognizable images yield to the addition and removal of material from the surface, a temporal topography. They become broken and chaotic, weaving what once was and what is into an illegible network of connected concurrences. Instead of depicting vast expanses that have appeared throughout American landscape traditions, the picture plane frames passages of time as it "forgets" the concealed and "remembers" the exposed. This practice situates itself along a suspension between binaries, linking past and present, representation and abstraction, accumulation and loss. Occupying a nonlinear time-space that merges dichotomies, my work at once mimics human gestures of the climate crisis and represents the possibility for recovery.”

Bio

Kentucky-based artist Sara Olshansky graduated from the University of Louisville in 2014 with a BFA in 2D Studios, a BA in Art History, and a minor in Spanish Language. Olshansky studied contemporary art practices at La Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and participated in residency programs at Berea College and the Ant Project in Mexico City. Olshansky has been awarded the 2024 Fischer Prize, several Great Meadows travel grants, as well as scholarships and grants from her alma mater. Her work is represented in public collections, such as Berea College and 21c Museum, and she has exhibited at KMAC Museum, University of Kentucky, Quonset Hut, and Quappi Projects. In addition to her studio practice, Olshansky gardens and focuses on reintroducing native species in urban areas, implementing small-scale food growth for households, and removing aggressive invasive plants without herbicides. She considers her work as a gardener an extension of her studio practice, as she reflects on human acts of layering, obfuscation, and recovery in the context of Kentucky’s ecology.