Irene Hardwicke Olivieri: Light Seeking Eyes

Irene Hardwicke Olivieri, Valentine for a cougar, 2005.

Irene Hardwicke Olivieri's intricately rendered paintings are tough to categorize but fascinating to look at: They're so obsessively embellished, eccentric and magical that it would not surprise you to learn that she is a schizophrenic or, at the very least, a reclusive sociopath. It's almost disappointing to meet her and discover how charming, attractive and utterly normal she seems.

Although Olivieri was formally trained, her work is striking for its many hallmarks that liken it to outsider art: the vivid colorations, the compulsive detailing, the purposeful disregard for perspective and scale, the use of found wooden surfaces as "canvases." Her pieces often depict dreamily surreal female figures, entirely decorated with intricately worked images of the flora and fauna located near her home in the high desert of Oregon, which she portrays as a lush, unspoiled paradise. Typically, the brightly colored pictures incorporate areas with tiny hand-lettered text, which, like her beautifully painted foliage and flowers, becomes pattern and decoration in and of itself. If you get close enough to read it, you can see that it functions both as a descriptive catalog of the images presented and a stream-of-consciousness narrative of Olivieri's observations on the natural world.

It's tempting to look for influences in her work. You can find allusions to various ethnic folk-art traditions, a distinct flavoring of Bollywood-like religious imagery and even the hint of Frida Kahlo. But overall, Olivieri's is a truly singular vision marrying narrative, decorative and symbolist energies, and one well worth seeing.—Philip Berger