Artist Linda Olsen Featured at the Phillips Gallery
Phillips Gallery is hosting an exhibit titled Park Plein Air Plus featuring the work of award-winning artist Linda Olsen.
The exhibit brings together the artist’s collection of her recent plein air works featuring familiar scenes throughout the valley and Glacier National Park. Olsen has been a lifelong resident of Montana and feels she has been gifted a legacy of the big sky landscapes and all its possibilities to use in her work. The public is invited to explore her exhibit and meet the artist on First Friday, May 5 from 5-7 p.m. The artist will talk about her inspiration for her work at 5:30 pm.
Olsen has enjoyed her passion for art since a young age. She studied a wide variety of art mediums in college and received a double major in German and art for education from Rocky Mountain College in Billings. After raising a family and owning BG’s Restaurant and other businesses in Kalispell for many years, she found her way back to her art. She studied painting at Flathead Valley Community College with master watercolorist Karen Leigh and it opened a whole new world for her. She continued studying at FVCC and with one of the most talented landscape painters in America, Mark Ogle.
She can frequently be found plein air painting around the valley and in Glacier Park. She enjoys capturing the fleeting light in the scene and getting a recognizable representation on her canvas or paper despite the weather conditions and elements around her. She enjoys using bright colors in her realistic style of work and finds watercolors a versatile medium to get a quick sketch to her more detailed portraiture and landscape work.
“I have a passion to paint, paint, and paint,” she says.
Olsen was honored by winning two second place and a first place people's choice award at the Hockaday Museum of Art members shows. She is a signature member of the Montana Watercolor Society and a member of the Plein Air painters of the Flathead Valley.
The Park Plein Air Plus exhibit will be on view through May 27 at Phillips Studio and Gallery located inside the Kalispell Center Mall. Call the gallery for more information at 406-309-2335.