Olive is a visual artist from Los Angeles currently living and working in Denver.  She received her BFA from Otis College of Art + Design in 2011.

 The bold graphic colorscapes, defined edges, line-work and movement are referential of Moya’s background in illustration and lettering. She describes her paintings as “abstract storytelling,” influenced by how Frank Stella described his own work, saying: “[Abstraction] could have a geometry that had a narrative impact. In other words, you could tell a story with the shapes.”   Each of Moya’s works are a push and pull between intuition and control. It is a performance by and for the artist, reflecting identity back on oneself to simulate comfort and stability in the face of fear and loss of control.  

Moya pairs the soft consoling colors of her childhood with the vivid influence of her early-adulthood in Los Angeles. The pale turquoise of the wallpaper in her childhood kitchen, or the faded nostalgic hues of Disney films on VCR against saturated primaries, striking yellow-greens and hot pinks.  Cloud-like organic shapes float across her panels, clustering around each other and are sometimes interrupted by sharp black pathways referential of Keith Haring and of Cy Twombly’s blackboard drawings. Each pair of black lines can be twisted and angry, slow and methodical, meandering, decisive, or stuttering- all layering atop each other and the dreamlike colorful background. Some pieces exist only as vivid pathways tangled, layered, and overwhelming.  The work often incorporates one or more clean shifts, giving the impression of a changing timeline, comic strip or storyboard. Each piece can be the portrayal of a single moment, or a recounting of a transformation over years. 

Moya’s focus on photography in the beginning of her art education has also been a consistent influence on her work. She began painting and drawing on photographs, book pages and magazines in school but recently her photographic elements are sourced from historical archives. The work comments on themes of physical spaces and the emotional importance humans attribute to them. Our natural or architectural environment is altered by time and memory but no matter the change we feel ownership over the space. The artist repeats this process in visual manner- distracting from, omitting, or highlighting aspects of the photo with her shapes, line work and colors. The “shifts” that occur in her purely abstract work often carry into the photographs, adding to the disrupted atmosphere. 

All images copyright Nicole Olive Moya. All rights reserved.