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This exhibition will include images from my recent series “Lost in Translation” that was shown at the Fresno Art Museum, the Tulare Historical Museum, at the Cultural Center in Ponta Delgada, San Miguel on the Island of the Acores, and during the recent University of Calgary’s Symposium on Tolerance.  I will include other images as well that have not been exhibited in Fresno.

From the very beginning, even when I was painting and drawing, human nature in all of its stages has been the basis for creating art.  People’s attitudes, biases, prejudices and the way they look, act and feel, both culturally, spiritually, and sexually have provided the content for my paintings and prints, but also in the process, given me a mirror of who I am.  In these portraits, narratives, and composites of human interaction, I reveal my history as a woman, dealing with contradictory forces, both spiritual and sexual, that have governed my life.

My Digital images are created on a G4 Apple Computer and printed on canvas or paper, on a 42” wide Encad Inkjet printer.  The inks are archival.

To obtain images, I have a Sony Cyber-shot digital camera, and a Nikon D80. I have a HP flatbed scanner as well as a Minolta Elite 5400 Slide Scanner.  For proofing and smaller prints, I have an Epson Stylus Photo 2200 printer.
My images are obtained in various ways.  Sometimes I scan images from slides, old photographs, and art history.  With regard to the images in Human Rights are Absolute, I attended the Gay Parade twice in San Francisco as well as at the Aids Quilt Display in Washington D.C. I was commissioned to do 12 photographs of Kings County Farmers.  As a result, I visited each farm, got to know the people, and photographed them in their working clothes and habitat.  Sometimes, I just go up to someone who has something unusual about him or her, and photograph them.

I love to use the camera to get my subject matter.  In shooting a lot of photographs, I can usually find that one expression, gesture, or action that identifies the person on a significant level.  To capture that special moment is a process of revealing that special persona most people try to hide.

Maxine Olson