Olive Ayhens : The World is Shaking

Olive in her studio.

Olive with me, my daughter and grandaughter

She is holding her Grand Central painting.

Olive Ayhens painting is extraordinarily detailed, at the same time she conveys a sense of emergency through instability that courses through all of her paintings. As you see here the cars flow through the station and there is an inside outside that is purposely iuxtaposed

Simultaneity is a key aspect of all of Ayhens paintings

Let us begin at the beginning

Nutty Woman and Calm Man 1971 dates from Ayhens early work in San Francisco. already a sense of agitation among the figures and the creatures with big white eyes in the background. Is there another undulating figure in the center?

Incandescent 1981 If you look closely there is a woman impaled or trapped on an odd shape ( another figure?)The glowing yellow streams in all directions as she attempts to escape its force. On the left side of the painting are several other figures swimming helplessly, some escaping fire.

In the mid 1990s Olive moved to New York City on a fellowship These two landscapes were done in 1996

Metabolic Landscape

City Moves In

In the first one we see a line of cars driving across the water passing a flooded urban island of skyscrapers. In the second one, the island of Manhattan presses against its restraints

Notice the color of the water!

A few years later (2005) she painted a shopping mall with soldiers guarding it. It seems eerily predictive today.

In 1999-2000 Ayhens had a residency in the World Trade Center, and she painted from on high looking down, but always with her own imagination. That habit persisted

Lamb 2006 This is one of Ayhens characteristic juxtapositions, the coffins are placed in the midst of a luxury environment with a swimming pool, as well as a crazy line up of computers suggesting who ever might work there isn’t paying any attention ( there are no living people in this painting)

Another ongoing fascination in her painting is extinct mammals They appear frequently as in this work, an extinct “camelid” standing on the shore in NYC.

Camelid in the City 2019. The poignency of this painting, of the lone creature standing on the edge of the East River with our city in the background, tells us how different our world is from that of these prehistoric beasts. We see Ancient fauna in these two sketches

Critters in the Cathedral Here- they are really taking over our paltry civilization

One of my favorites is Amphibian Emergency 2007. The frogs have moved into the highrise, obviously here humourously commenting on loss of habitat.

In this work: the extinct beasts are desperately swimming inside a flooded church

the Bristol Cone Trees are also extinct like the animals

The City is shaking and falling down Shaky Town with Tufa

Interior Wilderness 2008 : the wind is blowing through the space and everything is falling down

Here the artist holds Long Summer night 2024

Long summer night 2024

The painting suggests that everything is going in different directions, like a force is shoving the boats bridges and buildings. Here is a view from her studio that tells us how much she is capable of shaking things up.

This painting was done while she was in a residency in Europe

Flying Intersection 2018

Hyper urban 2017

Olives long time fascination with computer labs led to several memorable paintings.( See left side of Lamb )

Strange painting of computer lab by a river called Computer Zone. I think the artist feels a strange terror of computers with its out of control wiring. As we look now as technology is running amok using our water resources with AI, the next generation of horror is happening but it is much less dramatically visible. And of course there are no computer labs that look like this.

Computer Lab 2017

Genome Lab 2007

Another theme is deluges, in which our buildings and cars float helplessly in rising waters:

here the library is flooded

The Streams Return the rivers are overruning the city as it sinks into the sea, what could be a clearer predicition of climate change!

Rapid Commute 1996-97 is another favorite of mine, rapid yes, because the water is sending the cars down the river out of control, while the buildings collapse around them

Rising Waters engulf the city

This sense of water overcoming our structures is out of control here in paintings of Manhattan,everything is shaky .

After the flood the bison return

We can remember that Manhattan Island is small and surrounded by water. but apparently all the skyscapers were built on bedrock , so Ayhens has taken some liberties in suggesting that everything is shaky. But it makes its point!

These crowded man made structures defy logic in building so many skyscrapers in such a samll space.

Downstairs Deluge 2019

Parallel Strata- the immense modernist building lays ontop of the natural landscape like a huge creature

And Colosseum of Chaos

Sometimes she looks at nature on a smaller scale

Dry River

Ezra and Suzanne’s pool

Polluted Swamp We see the green algae taking over

St Joseph Indians In the Swamp on a visit to New Orleans

Spooky New Orleans

Deep Time Malta

Olive has been awarded many residences. Here is a painting she did while in Malta. the urban development of all the land masses is countered by 8 underwater statues.

Overpop Jamboree with a detrail of the crowd with umbrellas. One of the rare examples of a close up crowd of people. Olive said ths was painted during Covid