By Steevun Lemon
Art by Greg Olsen
I remember the first time I saw a Greg Olsen painting. I was helping in Salt Lake City at the ReparteeGallery when I saw an examination proof of O Jerusalem. I was so taken with it that I told the owner I would work for free that weekend if she would give me the proof. She agreed and my journey with Greg Olsen had begun.
Interviewing Greg was an unforgettable experience and one that confirmed what the artwork had already shown me; no only is he a gifted artist, but also a wonderful person. He is the kind of person that you instantly feel comfortable around, a person truly without guile.
Greg Olsen
How did you get interested in painting?
I grew up in a little farming town in Idaho called Iona. There weren't a lot of things to do there for entertainment, so art became entertainment for me. I had a couple of cousins and uncles who drew and painted, and my mom was kind of a Saturday painter. She got together and painted with a group of ladies. They would go out in the fields, up along the streams and the canal banks. Apparently art is a defective family gene.
click photo to enlarge
When did you get serious about art?
I always enjoyed doing art. Then in high school I had an excellent teacher, Mr. Whitney. He was very encouraging. He took us on art tours. We would come down to Utah, for example, and we would visit all of the university art departments. We also went to see some professional artists like Ed Fraughton, the sculptor. I thought he was amazing. I couldn't believe that someone could actually feed his family making art.
Was Mr. Whitney your first art teacher?
No, I also had a great teacher in eighth grade, Mr. Longbourn He taught me the basics and most importantly, he made art fun. He was a beatnik kind of guy. And he had this attitude like, "Let's just have a good time with art." So it was my favorite class of the day. Then I had Mr. Whitney, who was... intense. You either loved him or you hated him. This was not a fun class. Well, no, it was fun. But he took it very seriously. His attitude was more, "If you're not here to work hard, you'd better get out." He was a scary guy. He was also the baseball coach and he could be intimidating. I didn't dare turn in anything but my best work or he would rip it apart. He was very good at teaching the academics of drawing the figure. He made us feel like we were apprentices in a master's workshop. I was a real groupie by my senior year. I had six art classes. He even built a little cubby hole in the corner of the art room where I could just hang out all day long. We became close friends.
click photo to enlarge
Did you stay in touch with him?
Yeah. We're still good friends. He teaches now in Downey, California and coaches golf on the side.
Who else has influenced you?
I have a cousin, Vince Bodily, who is three years older than I am. In high school, he was - from my point of view then - a full-blown professional artist. He had this amazing ability to draw and capture the likeness of a model. In 20 minutes, he would do an exquisite pencil drawing with a lot of flare and personality and character to it. He was my idol. During the summer, he would say, "Have you filled up your sketch books yet? Are you drawin'?" And I would feel guilty if I hadn't been. He was a hero for me. He teaches at BYU-Idaho now and, like Mr. Whitney; he is serious about what he does.
Who else?
Well, my exposure to other artists was fairly limited in Iona. It's not a cultural center by any means. So I grew up seeing what was immediately available - the Saturday Evening Post Covers from Norman Rockwell, book covers by Charlie Russell, Fredrick Remington and the other western artists. These were the artists that I was exposed to. I also liked Maxwell Parish for some reason. His old calendars interested me. Visiting an art gallery for me was going to the book store and looking at the paperback book covers. I didn't even know who painted most of those. But I have always been fascinated by so many different styles.
click photo to enlarge
When did you decide on art as a career?
I started thinking about it seriously in high school. Then I studied illustration at Utah State. For a while I was planning on going off to New York or Los Angeles and becoming a great illustrator. That is what I wanted to do. But I ended up leaving school and working as an in-house illustrator for a business in Salt Lake City called the Exhibit Company. They did all kinds of exhibits - trade shows and museum visitor centers and other things like that. I did whatever they wanted, from murals to silk screening and lettering. I did that for about a year and a half before I decided to jump out on my own.
When was that?
About '81. I had a friend who talked me into it. Well, he didn't talk me into it, but he planted the seed. He said, "If I know you Greg, what you really would like to do is just be out on your own, painting." To which I responded, "Well...yeah." He said to me, "Well, it's not going to get any easier." We had one little baby then. Our car was paid for and our rent was about $150 a month. He convinced me that it was only going to get harder. So we thought about it a lot, and finally decided to go for it. I quit my job. We framed up all my old college art projects and I painted for a couple of months while we lived off our savings. Then at the end of this period, we had a big grand opening art show to kick off my new freelance career.
This friend who had persuaded me to leave my job came from a wealthy family. They had a beautiful home in which they offered to host this show for us. They worked really hard calling up all their friends and I am sure saying, "Would you please come and see this kid's stuff? Just be a body here in our house that night." So they had a great crowd. We had nice refreshments and we had printed up beautiful invitations. But when the night was over, we had sold enough to pay for those refreshments and, I think, most of the invitations.
I was left thinking, "Oh no. What have I done?!" There was a week of mourning after that grand opening show before somebody who had been there that night called us. They said, "We didn't really like anything at the show, but would you do a commission for us?" "You bet! Sure." That commission got us by for a month or two. And it went like that for the next ten or twelve years. We pretty much lived from painting to painting.
click photo to enlarge
What was the first piece you sold?
The first piece I ever sold was actually back in high school. I sold it to the principal of our HS. It was a great big landscape.
And what did it go for?
I think it was for $125. And I was just so excited I blew the whole wad. I bought a stereo.
When did you switch from landscapes to religious subjects?
Well, I didn't really switch. Maybe I just have a short attention span, but I really have a hard time pigeon-holing myself and doing only one thing. I just like lots of different subjects. I'm kind of like a musician who likes country music and jazz and everything else.
click photo to enlarge
How do you choose your subject matter?
The ideas come in a variety of ways I can't say that they happen in any kind of formulated manner. Sometimes things will come - BAM! - in one complete idea, and other times they evolve from one thing into another. I try to record ideas as they come along. I have a little notebook that I carry around with me. As I get ideas, I will jot down a one sentence idea, or I will draw a little thumbnail sketch to remind me of a particular thought.
When they come to me, I think that I will remember them. But when I go back and read this notebook, I am amazed. I think "Oh yeah, I forgot about that." Or "I don't remember ever even thinking of that." It is almost like someone else wrote it. So when it is time to do a new piece, I will go through my notebook. Certain ideas will percolate to the top, and I'll get more excited about one than another and that is what I paint.
click photo to enlarge
What motivates you to paint?
A number of things. My family and children paintings are a form of journaling for me. My mom was great at keeping journals and it is so fun to go back and read things that she wrote. I am awful at keeping journals. So this is kind of my way of recording my life. Our kids are in a lot of the paintings. And I guess that is sort of selfish. But it part of my life. We have five girls and one son. There is a lot of... estrogen stuff going on around our house. So even though some of the paintings are a little sappy and sentimental, it is just what happens around the house. That is one motivation.
As for the inspirational pieces, I think artists have been drawn to that kind of challenging subject matter for centuries. And again, it is a part of who I am.
The inspirational pieces are the most difficult for me. I do the other things as a release from that. When I do an inspirational piece, it wipes me out. I have to take a break and do something a little more light-hearted, something that is not so serious.
There is a lot of pressure when you do inspirational things. I know most of it is self-imposed. But you create an image and you say, "This is supposed to represent Jesus," for example. And there are thousands of people out there who will say, "Well that isn't how I thought of him in my mind." It is a very personal thing to people. So I try to think of it as more of a symbol of him. And there are times that I, as the artist, look at a piece and say, "Yeah that is it." And other times I think, "Well, maybe next time. Then I move on."
What inspired the recent series of abstract pieces?
That was a year or so ago. I haven't done any more since then, though I've always done some of that. That summer I just really focused on it. It was a therapeutic thing. I painted 32 of those paintings, mostly as a release from the tight realism I usually do. There is a certain amount of that work with realism that is simply laborious and technical. I get it too a certain point, and I already know what it is going to look like when it is done. But I still have three weeks to work on it. Not that it loses the fun; it is just technical. So these impressionistic painting I would start and sign the same day, sometimes even by lunchtime. A few times I spent two or three days, but that was the most. It was invigorating. I needed that to get the juices flowing a little bit. And I'll continue to sprinkle those things in for my own enjoyment.
click photo to enlarge
Which is your favorite piece?
That is like asking, which is your favorite child? Some days you could kick them all out. I don't know about a favorite piece, but, one that I would never sell is a painting that I did of my wife. She came out to the studio and modeled for a few days. Everything just fell right into place with it. I only worked on for maybe three days, but it was just a cool experience to have her sit out here with me. Even though we've been married for several years, this was the first time I had done that. I had taken photographs of her and used her in pictures before. This was the first one I had done live. You get to know a person differently when you just sit and stare at them all day. It was a fun experience.
Did she enjoy it?
She fell asleep a lot of the time. But I think so, to a certain degree. Modeling is not a fun job. Painting a model is fun, but modeling can be brutal.
What are your plans for the next 5 years?
You have caught me in a transitional time. We just announced at Mill Pond Press yesterday that I am leaving and starting a publishing company. Millpond has been good to us and I really love the friends I've made there, but there are a variety of reasons why it makes sense to go. So like it or not, Greg is now in the publishing business.
click photo to enlarge
What are your painting plans?
You know, I really don't plan. I admire artists that can come up with a four-year project, for example, and stick to it. I am just in awe. One year, I tried to come up with twelve paintings I was going to paint. I ended up doing two of those and then some others not on the list. So I surprise even myself with what is coming up next. I tend to do whatever gets me excited most at the time. My new publishing company will probably pull their hair out at that. They may like to have some idea of what is coming. So perhaps I will work at forecasting a little more. My interest still lies in doing the inspirational pieces. But there is other subject matter that I will continue to toss in here and there.
What would you like people to say about you in 50 years?
That is a hard question. It makes me feel a little goofy thinking about it. My job really hasn't changed over the years. I still sit here by myself most of the time. The work rolls out and has a life of its own. And it creates some kind of legacy, I suppose. There was a time when that weighed on me. I thought, "I have to make a difference in the world. I need to touch people and raise the bar." And a part of that is true. But sometimes thinking about it can make it weigh so heavily on you that you don't have fun while you are painting, and that comes through in your work. You can think about it too much.
click photo to enlarge
So I hope that I can continue to enjoy coming out every day and painting things that are honest for me. There are going to be people that don't like it, but every once in a while, somebody will. If I can just enjoy it, I'll be happy. I also want to continue being around my family and spending time with them. What I hope they don't say is, "Dad cared more about his paintings then he cared about us kids." I've always tried to make them a part of what I'm doing. It's great to be close here to home. More and more I get concerned about those kinds of things. I am a grandpa now. We have a new grandson. And that does make you start thinking about weird things like, "What does legacy mean?" My wife's dad has 25 or 30 grandkids and 25 or 30 great-grandkids. And when we get together, I think, "That is quite a legacy." I just hope that there will be few people who have enjoyed the same things that I have enjoyed.
Spotlight on Individual Works of Art
click photo to enlarge
The idea for O Jerusalem came when I traveled to the Holy Land with my wife several years ago. Like a lot of people, I kept wondering while we were there, "What was it like when Jesus was here?" One evening we climbed up the Mount of Olives. We sat on some rocks and we watched the sun go down. I imagined Jesus there, lamenting over Jerusalem. He said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft would I have gathered you? " I have always tried to think of that invitation being open to all of us. Though we are not down there in the old city of Jerusalem, somehow he has a vantage point where he sees us all. And he still invites us.
click photo to enlarge
Be Not Afraid came as a full-blown idea. When I first saw it, I imagined Jesus helping two individuals across this stream, but I saw them more as adults, a man and a wife. I started sketching the painting out like that. But visually, it looked a little goofy. They didn't look helpless enough. I decided, "Maybe I can use little children to symbolize each of us and our comparative helplessness in relation to the Savior." He helps these children across this rushing stream, which represents the tumultuous times in our lives. And he knows the safe passage, where to step to get us safely through to the other side. Be Not Afraid reminds me that I should not be afraid when those difficult times come. We can just reach up, take his hand, and he will get me there. Sometimes he even picks me up and carries us.
click photo to enlarge
I had initially been composing In Remembrance of Me as a Leonardo-like composition of the last supper. Then one day, I happened to be looking through an old photography book. It had some pictures, oddly enough, of John F. Kennedy in the oval office during the Cuban missile crisis. In most of the pictures, he was surrounded by his cabinet members, military advisers, his closest associates. But in a couple of the photographs, the photographer had zoomed in on the president and cropped out everyone else. And on his face, you could read the weight of this world crisis that was on his shoulders. And for some reason, as I looked at those photos, I made a connection between that situation and the Savior and his position at the last supper. There were some similarities that stood out to me. So I decided to show symbolically how alone Jesus was by zooming in and cropping out the other apostles. The only apostle you see is out the window - there is a little figure of Judas scurrying off to betray Jesus. In Remembrance of Me depicts how alone the Savior must have felt. Although his closest friends surrounded him, this was something He had to carry by himself.
click photo to enlarge
In His Constant Care
In His Constant Care is set in an actual location in Jerusalem. The architecture here is a cross barrel arch. It wouldn't have actually been around until about ad 200. But it just had a cool feel. And I thought, "The Savior could be wherever, whenever." Plus this is not a scriptural account, so I just used that backdrop. But there is the scripture that not even a single sparrow falls without Him being aware of it. So In His Constant Care portrays his capacity to love and notice even the smallest creature. If he knows about each one of those little sparrows, he probably knows about you - the things that happened in your day today, what is going on this week, what your struggles are, and what your triumphs are, too.
click photo to enlarge
A Light Unto the Gentiles
A Light unto the Gentiles was one of the first. The Church had asked for a cover for the Christmas Ensign. They wanted something of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus, but not a manger scene. I decided on the Simeon story. Simeon had been promised that he wouldn't taste of death until he saw the Messiah, and so this little trio comes to the temple grounds and the spirit tells him this is the Savior. A Light unto the Gentiles was really a pivotal piece for me. Up to that time, I had done pictures of Jesus, but as a baby or as an adult at a great distance. I hadn't really tried to do a portrait. I was too intimidated. But a funny thing happened as we were staging the scene for this painting. All the models were there in costume. We had a little baby that was 39 days old - Jesus was 40 days old when they took him to the temple. During the modeling session, this little baby started crying. We handed him to his real mother, who was standing off in the wings, and carried on with a doll as a stand-in.
I remember looking over and seeing this mom holding her little screaming baby. She placed him on her shoulder and started patting his back trying to calm him down. As I watched her, this weird light went on in my head. I realized, "I've never thought of the real baby Jesus screaming and crying for his mother. He was probably a lot more like what I am seeing in front of me, than what I have been imagining in my mind." I grew up with the image of the baby Jesus in a manger, his arms out, looking up with a halo on his head. My wife and I had a few kids of our own at that time. None of them had ever done the arms-out pose. I started thinking about him differently. And I started thinking of all those characters in the scriptures as real people.
They were probably a lot like the models I had there that day. My sister played the part of Mary. I had an old college roommate in the background. My wife's uncle was there. They were just normal people. Ultimately I started thinking about the Savior as a real person. He was not "normal," but that there was a human side to him. That realization has affected everything I have done since then. I began worrying a little less about things like his eye color or how long his hair was. I started trying to paint him like a normal human being, while showing what is inside him - his character, facets of his personality, his spirit. I didn't know how to capture that kind of stuff, but that was my goal. And I quit worrying so much about the technicalities. A Light unto the Gentiles is one of my favorite pieces.
