Bobbie Oliver Explained

Bobbie Oliver
Birth Name:Roberta Anne Oliver
Birth Date:17 June 1943
Birth Place:Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Nationality:Canadian-American
Spouse:Frank Kitchens, married 1993
Training:Centre for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan (1966–1968) and at St. Alban’s School of Art, St. Alban’s, England (1968)
Movement:Abstraction
Known For:abstract painter

Roberta Anne Oliver (born June 17, 1943) is a Canadian-American abstract painter.

Biography

After moving to New York from London in 1971, she worked for Isamu Noguchi and La Monte Young. In the 1980s she taught painting at Princeton University, the School of Visual Arts, New York, the Banff School of Fine Arts, Canada and The Rhode Island School of Design where she served as a Tenured Professor of Painting and Chair of Painting (1982–1983 and 2006–2008). She also taught at the National College of Art in Lahore, Pakistan and the Rhode Island School of Design in Rome, Italy.[1]

In the 1980s, she worked almost as a sculptor, building sculpture-like wall reliefs with thick grounds of wax on plywood which she incised with simple geometric forms.

In 1999, her painting looked like water with floating shapes.[2] From 2005 on her paintings became more expressionistic. They were built up from layers of opaque washes into luminous monochromes of watery depth which suggested movement. One critic suggested that her influences might be the dream-like works of Surrealism but Oliver said, as always, that these works reflected her own hand working with the material. In 2015, a critic said of her show of mostly green paintings at Valentine Gallery in New York that the tonal play and shapes recalled shadows and reflections, or clouds and sheets of rain.[3] [4] In 2019, a show titled Residuals, of blue paintings created from 2017 to 2019 was shown at High Noon Gallery in New York.[5] They revealed the process by which she made them but viewers and critics persisted in finding images in them.[6]

She has exhibited in New York at High Noon Gallery, Hionas Gallery, Feature Gallery, Showroom, Valentine Gallery as well as having solo shows in Toronto at the Olga Korper Gallery (her long-term dealer), in Los Angeles at the Jancar Gallery and in Laguna Beach at The George Gallery.

Oliver lives and works during the winters in New York City and during the summers in a converted church in Rock Valley, New York, which she and her husband, Frank Kitchens, have renovated.[7]

References

Bibliography

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Oliver . Bobbie . The American College of Greece – Collection . www.acgart.gr . The American College of Greece . 2020-08-19.
  2. Web site: Oliver . Bobbie . Thumbnail of images . ccca.concordia.ca . ccca . 2020-08-20.
  3. Web site: Rhodes . David . Slow Spilling Movement: The Paintings of Bobbie Oliver . artcritical.com . Artcritical, October 15, 2015 . 2020-08-20.
  4. Web site: Kalm . James . Bobbie Oliver Curated by Mary Ann Monforton at the New VALENTINE . www.youtube.com . jameskalmroughcuts, sep 29, 2015 . 2020-08-19.
  5. Web site: Jordan . Patti . Bobbie Oliver: Residuals . artefuse.com . Arte Fuse . 2020-08-19.
  6. Web site: Bobbie Oliver's flood of associations . www.twocoatsofpaint.com . Two Coats of Paint . 2020-08-20 . 9 April 2019.
  7. Web site: Home as a gift from the past . riverreporter.com . River Reporter, cover story of the first 2019 edition of Our Country Home, March 12, 2019 . 2020-08-20.