Ollie Gee
My pseudo name is Ollie Gee. I am a gay, Hispanic artist who explores the human experience through a variety of art media. As an artist, I illustrate intangible emotion using figurative and anthropomorphic themes. As an educator, I explore the principles of design and the elements of art through personal expression. Art is therapy.
My work explores the human condition, light and dark. It is a way for me to scrutinize various aspects of the social consciousness. To create a playful and innocuous veneer, I use bright hues in my watercolor pieces. The black and white drawings are more straightforward, expressing a wide range of metaphors, clues for the viewer’s interpretation. My photographs are attention grabbing, with intentional naiveté, to evoke a sense of childhood perspective on the world of adults. Upon deeper examination of each piece, the disquieting and melancholic layers emerge. While the darkness surfaces, I hope that the humor is clear. Playing with pain has been an incredibly therapeutic path for me. Talking about my emotions and perceptions, writing, painting, drawing about it, all of these actions and activities have been crucial to my personal growth as a human. I want my work to be a jumping off point for conversation, perhaps like those laminated photos of bears having tea that teachers used for our elementary school writing prompts in the early 90’s. My intention is basically to create art that therapizes me, then you, as the viewer, can create in your mind a story for each piece, one that is personal to you, aside from trying to figure out what I was trying to say. It is important to look for humor and light in even the darkest corners of our universe. The art I create is meant to share a story that many people also experience but do not necessarily know how to visualize or even vocalize. The goal is for each piece to provoke thought and stimulate conversation. Though I may have a recognizable concept as the original launching point for each piece, once I have completed a work, I believe that the continuation of the idea or story is through the viewer’s insight or intuition. Artist Statement For the CHAOS!!!!! show I decided to take a different approach to my “scolding” of our president. Knowing that this show is historically wild, I decided to do four, “simple”, square, watercolors that follow in the footsteps of the pop artists of the 1960’s. I got this idea because the academic school year is quickly approaching and I am in the process of readying myself for art-education-action. I chose to practice my skill via watercolor with value, color, and form. I also wanted to create art pieces that were symbolically meaningful, playful, did not focus so much on the negative, that I could show my students. Each color represents an emotion or a human experience. The objects that the skulls are biting down on each have a meaning of their own. For example, the “skull study in orange” has Donald’s bobble-head squarely between its jaws. The shades of orange represent several different ideas; the darker shades represent things I feel about Trump, deceit, distrust, aggression, and domination, while the lighter shades refer to the hope of wisdom, friendliness, and safety. Lastly, the color is a reference to Trump’s terrible, fake, orange tan and the types of humans that put themselves inside of tanning beds to achieve a desired skin tone, closer to the color of those they hate. I chose not to do photographs or miniatures this time because this summer has been full of awful, sad news. I did not want to look at his face while I was working. When I decided that I would do watercolors of skulls, I looked around my studio to find objects that might represent an emotional expression or experience. Without explaining each in detail, the “Skull Study in Blue” is gently clenching a lightbulb that represents the classic “idea”; the “Skull Study in Green” is grinding its teeth on the American Constitution; the “Skull Study in Red” is biting down hard on a stick I found in the yard. Each represents some level of ire at what is happening politically. With these watercolors, I was able to channel much of my angst and sadness about current events. In the midst of a nation run by a xenophobic, sexist, homophobic, racist, narcissistic, hateful white man, silence is unacceptable. We must resist what has becoming shockingly unsurprising. CV Education University of North Texas - BFA Art Education - 2009 Exhibition History Solo Shows: August 2016. Anem a Sobrevivire. The Fort Worth Community Art Center. Fort Worth TX. March 2014. Sobreviviremos. The Ant Colony. Dallas TX. June 2006. A Series of Unrelated Photographs and Drawings. Art Six. Denton TX. April-August 2007. Pterodactyl Fractal, an Art Opening. The Normal Street Tattoo Shop. Denton TX. Group Shows: April 2018. Well Dressed Secrets. Gallery 414. Fort Worth TX. December 2016. R02ooth. Ro2 Gallery and Art Tooth. Dallas TX. June 2016. Fort Worth Zine Fest 2K16. 1919 Hemphill; Fort Worth TX. April 2016. Cien for Cien. Bobby on the Drums Gallery. Fort Worth TX. January 2016. Drawing Quote Unquote. The University of Texas at Irving. Irving TX. November 2015. Fifty for Fifty. Bobby on the Drums Gallery. Fort Worth TX. January 2015. Whoaa There! [A Group Show]. The Ant Colony Gallery. Dallas TX. December 2014. The Ant Colony’s First Birthday! [A Group Show]. Dallas TX. November 2008. Women’s Center Art Show. Women’s Center at UNT. Denton TX. November 2008. UNT NAEA Art Show. The UNT Gallery. Denton TX. May 2008. Fort Worth Community Arts Center. Fort Worth TX. April 2008. UNT NAEA Art Show. The UNT Gallery. Denton TX. Curatorial Work: April 2014- September 2015. Curator at the Ant Colony Gallery. Dallas TX. September 2015. Nancy Ferro: Adaptive Reuse. June 2015. Doug Land: Extravagant Rubbish: Aesthetic Forms and Their Opposites. April 2015. Derrick White: A World of Trouble on My Mind. March 2015. Carroll Swenson Roberts: Memory Palace. January 2015. Whoaa There! [A Group Show]. December 2014. The Ant Colony’s First Birthday [A Group Show]. June 2014. Jon Fontenot: Paintings and Drawings. May 2014. Diana Urbina: Photography. |