Artist Statement for Richard Olmstead

Richard Olmstead is showing this month at Full Tilt. Here is his artist statement:

Artist statement from richard olmstead:

I drink unhealthy amounts of coffee and spend too much time alone with a pencil. I find myself a great deal more concerned with the aesthetics of the physical world, than that confined by a frame or held hostage in a museum. We need look no further than these polluted pastures and seas of gray to be reminded why I’m not interested in discussion or depiction so much as in fighting for those whose voices we choose to ignore, and I’d give up any canvas in a heartbeat to draw instead upon the rubble of empires.

I’m influenced by authors and criminals, strangers and friends, by so many people in passing along my travels. I am influenced by every honest smile that was more than good salesmanship.

I’m influenced in a rather different way by rubber bullets and pepper spray. By the police who I’ve watched beat up my friends. I’m influenced by the polluted air, the tainted water, and the dwindling biodiversity. I’m influenced by the developers who are cutting down my back yard, the businessmen that systematically steal the worlds resources, the management that robs our creative energy, and the stress filled dissociative social environment they have left us with, and I think it’s about time that the fucking lines are drawn. - Richard Olmsted,