Jessi Olarsch: Joy, Fear, and Everything in Between
Jessi Olarsch is a figurative painter based in NYC whose paintings draw upon her lived experiences: chronic illness, queer friendship, the shifting boundaries of public and private queer life, and the complicated joy of finding a community. Olarsch’s distinct color palette and photographic sense of composition draw the viewer into intimate scenes saturated with nostalgia and longing.
How did your creative journey begin?
My creative journey began when I was in a required high school art class as a freshman. I had always been drawn to making, and had flirted with bookmaking, crocheting, and random other art projects that pop up when you’re a kid. It was when I was introduced to living, working artists by my high school art teacher that I realized how powerful and exciting and contemporary art can be. From that day forward, my practice was defined by looking to other living artists for inspiration and experimenting with my own style. Somewhere around that time I discovered my affinity for figurative painting and the color purple, and the rest was history.
Where do you find inspiration for your work?
I find inspiration in two key places: In my own life and in the work of other artists (visual artists, writers, theorists, etc). There are generations of queer painters who I owe everything to. Seeing the incredible things made by so many wonderful artists helps to keep my practice moving and grounded in a cannon that is being continually built and reshaped by my peers around me. I also draw inspiration from my own life, working often from memory and photos, working to rebuild and explore key memories and moments through painting.
How has your work evolved over the last few years?
My work has evolved a ton over the last few years. Until my thesis project for my BFA program, my work was quite representational, exploring color and space without moving too close into the personal realm. For my BFA thesis project --which I started in the fall of 2020-- I created a series of daily paintings on found materials from my apartment: cardboard packaging, food wrappers, plastic waste, and especially junk mail, which had been accumulating excessively given the Fall 2020 elections. In normal times, I’d have displayed these paintings in a gallery space. Instead, I created an installation in my bedroom, transforming the space into a visual sense of the chaos felt when spending the days in one space for so long. This was my first long-form painting project that dealt with a subject matter beyond the representational, and really expanded my understanding of what painting could do. After college, I began working on Seminal Moments, Reconstructed, which I am still working on today. This series, inspired by artists like Alice Neel, Nicole Eisenman, Salman Toor, Linus Borgo, Sasha Gordon, and countless others, uses color to deconstruct memory by recreating key moments as a young lesbian learning to interact with the world. These paintings examine the raw tenderness of queer friendship, the shifting boundaries of public and private queer life, life with chronic illness, and the complicated joy of coming “into” a community.
What does a typical day in the studio look like for you, and how has your art practice grown or changed?
On a typical day in the studio, I will set aside a few un-interrupted hours to paint, usually spending the majority of time on one piece and then adding smaller touches to other works in progress. While painting, I’ll usually be bopping to one of my many Spotify playlists or a good audio book.
While I was in school, I set aside a few hours each week to work on my personal body of work (read: purple, figurative), but spent the majority of my time in the studio creating work for various classes from photography to printmaking to figure drawing to hand-drawn computer animation. I’m super grateful for the breadth of requirements in my BFA program, especially now that I have much less time for experimentation.
Which experiences have impacted your work as an artist?
Ooh, this is a big question. In my work, I’m always thinking about ‘firsts’ -- first loves, first kisses, first apartments, first serious illnesses, first heartbreak, that sort of thing.
How has social media impacted your work?
Social media has had an enormous impact on my work, especially in the wee beginning. Like I mentioned before, I never really had an inkling that being an artist was something I could do until I started engaging with other young, working artists on Instagram. I would sit in my childhood bedroom doing ‘master copies’ in my sketchbook, teaching myself to imitate the styles of artists I admired until I learned to develop my own style. It was around this time that I also made my own social media account solely for my artwork, where I could actually begin to build a community. As a teenager, I contributed a few articles for Tavi Gevinson’s iconic Rookie Magazine. I had my first show thanks to social media, where I exhibited a few early paintings at ‘Teen Art Salon’, where I met other young artists like the wonderful Lauren Tepfur. My little instagram community has continued to be a super important piece of my life as an artist, introducing me to countless incredible artists all over the world. Some of my closest friends in the art world I met through instagram. While there are certainly many drawbacks of social media, especially as a means to grow a small business, the community and inspiration and excitement it helps to build is truly unparalleled.
What drew you to the color purple?
I wish I had a concise answer to this! This is a question I have been trying to answer and re-answer for years. Here is a zine I made in 2019 trying to answer this question.
Ultimately, my work explores queerness, chronic illness, love, and friendship, and purple has the unique ability to capture the tableau of intimacy, nostalgia, regret, love, joy, fear, and everything in between that comes with navigating these themes.
Website: https://www.jessiolarsch.com/
Instagram: @jessioart