November Artist of the Month: Liz Crimi Olsson

    Art At The Kent Library

Sponsored by The Friends of the Kent Library 

with Arts on the Lake

Exhibition Dates: November 1st to November 30th

Liz Crimi Olsson

Having grown up around art and artists, I have become a very visual person. Sometimes I think I see what others may not see. Very often I may be taking a walk or driving my car and my eye is caught by something beautiful. Something that I think will make a beautiful photograph or painting or sculpture.

I come from a family of artists and sculptors, both professional and non-professional. As a child my mother took me to the many art museums in New York City and I fell in love with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I always participated in special art projects in elementary school. I spent childhood summers in our little cottage in Lake Carmel where I sketched and painted the wildflowers, made outfits for my paper dolls, and taught myself needlework. I majored in art in high school and participated in several art projects. I majored in art in college where I studied sketching, life drawing, design, sculpture, and art history. The creative genes in me always found a way to surface…either by painting stage sets for community theater, needlework, making my own clothing, assorted crafts, baking, cooking, gardening, painting and wallpapering my home, directing the repainting of a Westchester railroad station, and as an active member of a town beautification committee. In my more recent years I have visited Italy and Sicily many times to revel in the art of the masters.  However, I never really learned how to “paint”.

I have always been attracted to the beauty of watercolor. I never had the confidence to take a watercolor painting class until I met an artist in a gallery who encouraged me to take the plunge. So I enrolled in classes at the Putnam Arts Council in Mahopac, NY, the Westchester Community College Center for the Arts at the White Plains County Center, the Bronx Botanical Gardens, HRCE (Hudson River Community Education) in Dobbs Ferry, and  the Railyard Arts Workshop in Croton Falls, NY. I have participated in many art workshops in watercolor, acrylics, calligraphy, and drawing at several public libraries.

I am a member of the Putnam Arts Council in Mahopac, NY and Arts-on-the-Lake in Lake Carmel, NY. I have participated in local group art shows and have sold some of my watercolor paintings.

I have fallen in love with the meditative aspect of painting which allows me to focus on my art and put all worries aside! I choose to see and paint beauty in difficult times…

"Day's End"

Watercolor

$200

"Rockport, Massachusetts"

Watercolor

$200

"Venezia"

Watercolor

$200

Artist Statement | Liz Crimi OHarrison

I love color. So I study and paint in watercolor.  I choose peaceful references and, most recently, from photos that I have taken over the years. Many have personal meaning.  I choose to see beauty in challenging times and share it with the viewer.