About The Art

Meet-the-Artist: March 23, 2025 from 1-3pm | Gallery talk 2pm

Chuck Olson received his M.A. in painting from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1976. He was the chairman and professor of fine art at the Saint Francis University, Loreto, Pennsylvania until 2019. Learning foreign languages while teaching opened many doors for him, one leading to meeting his French-born wife, Marie. He directed a university arts and language program in Parma, Italy for 12 years, which supported his enthusiasm for travel, and which led to a deeper involvement in that “second” culture.

Learning music entered this mix with Marie’s gift of a guitar when Chuck was 45, and another door opened. Art and music together emerged in a curious harmony between designing for space in visual art and designing for time in music.

According to Dr. Vicky A. Clark, “Chuck Olson approaches the blank canvas with intellectual curiosity and childlike wonder. He follows a protocol of trial and error, a course of action and reaction. This relation-based process is now instinctual, proceeding from past work while allowing something new to emerge at any stage.”

Clark goes on saying, “Olson’s life and work share a complexity that surfaces through intersecting layers. His paintings are non-representational, yet they contain traces of objects from the real world. His process involves layers created consciously or spontaneously, and the final paintings are multifaceted, filled with what is comprehensible and what is indefinable.”

Pablo Picasso asserted that “there is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards, you can remove all traces of reality. There’s no danger then, anyway, because the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark.” Clark states, “This is a perfect explanation of the neither/nor contradiction that muddies the common opposition of realism and abstraction, and this has become essential to the personal discourse of Olson’s practice. While his aesthetic is based on a deep-seated understanding of visual language, his source material also includes memories that are often attached to specific objects or places.”

Dr. Louis Zona, the Butler’s Executive Director, says, “The art of Chuck Olson presents abstraction in an entirely new light, incorporating what might be termed mainstream formalism and an amalgam of non-figurative modes with expressionistic approaches that include the New York School’s freewheeling methods. In many ways, Olson’s paintings bring together the European brand of expressionism seen in the work of Pierre Soulages, Nicolas de Staël’s rich impasto, the striking collage of Robert Motherwell, and “Rothkoesque” allover, edge-to-edge color fields.” Abstraction by its very nature is problematic in that few clues are available to the viewers to grasp full understanding of what is before them. But artists as inventive as Olson, in so many ways, offer us so much more than representational art ever could. Kandinsky, over 100 years ago, understood the power of pure abstraction, but the modern era painters were the missionaries who made an artist like the remarkable Chuck Olson.”

Olson has had numerous one-person and group exhibitions from Pittsburgh to New York City, and internationally in France, Italy, and Germany. He is also in many private and public collections, including Double Tree Hotel Corporation, PPG Industries, The Tomayko Foundation, and Westinghouse Corporation.

The exhibition is in the Finnegan/Hynes & Davis Galleries.

A new hardcover book which is a survey of the last 15 years of his work, CHUCK OLSON: PAINTINGS 2010-2024, was published as part of this exhibition. The 11 1/4” x 10 1/4” book’s 204 pages contain over 140 plates, a forward by Dr. Louis Zona, a 20-page essay entitled “A Sense of Place” by Dr. Vicky A. Clark, photography by Erica Dilcer, and designed by Kate Williams. Books will be available at the Butler’s museum store during the exhibition run from March 23 through May 18. The price is $70 (sales tax and s/h to be applied at time of purchase.

Meet-the-Artist event

CATEGORIES: Exhibition

DATE: March 23, 2025 - May 18, 2025

LOCATION: Finnegan-Hynes & Davis Galleries

RECEPTION: March 23th, 2025 1:00pm—3:00pm, Gallery talk 2pm