spills from the milieu

February 2 - February 21, 2025

Solo exhibition in Gateway Gallery

1601 W Mt Royal Ave, Baltimore, MD 21217

Exhibition Statement:

Olivia Bell (2002), born in Austin, Texas, is an artist pursuing a BFA in painting and printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Bell primarily works in oil paint on panel and canvas as well as a variety of printmaking methods.

Creating paintings that grapple with the feeling of change and loss, I distill the bittersweet passage of time into visual form. My subjects—whether landscapes, objects, or figures—are fragments of a larger whole, woven together into a constellation. Relationships between the setting and people coming together in unextraordinary but timeless moments of leisure. My work is deeply rooted in personal memory, where the act of looking and observing becomes a way to capture the fleeting beauty of everyday moments. I hope to encourage people to slow down and get lost in the layers, reflecting the state of the subjects. Using oil paint on canvas or panels, I depict these humble instances using vivid, saturated colors to represent the oppressive Texas heat. The intensity of the climate I grew up in, imbues each scene with a sense of nostalgia and place that mirrors my recollections. Thin washes of paint build up the scene and create density The layering of images and objects creates haze and confusion that comes with time and maps my nonlinear and crowded way of looking back. The shadow from a branch cast on a leg, the wasp, the condensation of a bottle, the smell while we would wade through the creek, all exist together on different planes at the same time. Tracing these connections, causes my memory to muddle together leaving me with ephemeral states of in-between.

spills from the milieu is a selection of work showing moments as they exist in my memory, bright, and cloudy with the overflow. This body of work traces the converging existences in settings of epicurean delight via existentialism.