Julie Olson
Arvilla, ND
Disabled artist, owner, of The Middle of Nowhere Studio, located on family farm in eastern North Dakota. Established 2016.
Message
Julie Olson has been making art since she could first hold a pencil. Winning the local town's Centennial logo contest at 16 propelled her into her own business doing murals, paintings, and graphic design at a young age.
She graduated with a BFA from Arizona State University and moved to Washington, DC, soon becoming art director, senior designer and illustrator for USDA 1990–2004. She also received a graduate degree in landscape design and sustainable landscaping in 2009 from The George Washington University.
Moving back to her family farm near Grand Forks, North Dakota in 2009 to care for her elderly mother, she rekindled her love of painting through an oil painting class. She cleaned out her dad's old workshop and set up her own art studio. Julie received a grant from North Dakota Vocational Rehabilitation Department for a start-up art business, opening The Middle of Nowhere Studio in 2016.
Julie has sold paintings around the world including Germany, England, India, Australia, Canada and US since 2017 through social media, and showing and selling art locally since 2018. Specializing in abstracts in alcohol ink, watercolor ink or acrylic paint, she often uses iridescent, color-shifting and metallic inks, holographic glitter, mica, and holographic and metallic foils. Julie gets her inspiration from native flowers, woodlands and prairie landscapes as well as her own flower gardens on her family farm in the Turtle River valley of rural North Dakota.
Statement
Julie Olson is an abstract artist working with alcohol inks, watercolor inks, acrylics, and mixed media. Her work exudes energy, joy, and beauty. She draws upon the vibrant colors in nature and interprets them through the fluidity of ink and paint. Her paintings capture the essence of the surroundings of her family farm by taking wildflowers, garden flowers, grasses, tree bark, and other elements from nature. Julie interprets her local North Dakota environment, the prairie sky, and the Turtle River that flows through her family farm in an abstract manner, creating with a sensitive use of color.