Oil on canvas
36″ x 36″
$1000

Artist Statement

I’m a traveler at heart. I grew up in New Zealand and my love for painting started here. After school I studied architecture, then visited Sydney, Australia for a music festival and stayed. Off the plane and saw a cloud of fruit bats flying and knew it was where I should be. A few years later I got a visa for America and lived in California, Utah and Arizona. Living in different places is freedom. Being in the desert in Arizona was unreal, a cowboy town where people line dance in bars and shoot guns in the desert. They lived a totally different way and I learnt there are so many different ways to be.
My drawings became more weird and surreal, drawing from my subconscious. This feeling of freedom has stayed with me and shows in my paintings – open space for the viewer to experience whatever they feel.

I moved to Canada in 2014. I lived in several cities around Vancouver, and now live in Greater Vancouver with my husband and our two beautiful girls.
Being with my family in this place, I’ve found an inner calm to make art from. Painting helps bring focus to the present moment by relaxing and letting things flow.

My art evolved with my experiences, emotions and dreams, through to a feeling of freedom and peace.
I hope to inspire the viewer in whatever way they feel.

Artist Bio

Olivia Harks is an oil painter who creates surreal interpretations of human emotion. Olivia was born in Toronto in 1988 and grew up in New Zealand. She lived in Sydney, Australia and then America before she returned to Canada. This travel inspired a feeling of freedom and weightlessness which shows in her art. In the global world we live in, cultural barriers are lifted, and making connections is about who you are not where you live. Works incorporate vivid female figures in flowing, floating and suspended motions. Using selective colours in layers of glazing with black and white undertones, she carves light and depth into each piece using her signature chiaroscuro style. Olivia brings deeper layers of consciousness into her art, and her dark style comes from this. She now lives in greater Vancouver with her husband and two daughters.

Find Olivia online at:

Website: http://www.oliviaharks.com
Instagram: @oliviaharksart
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/oliviaharksart