We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Irene Hardwicke Olivieri. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Irene below.

Hi Irene, thanks for joining us today. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?

The most exciting part of being an artist for me is when I get an idea/inspiration for a new project and then have to figure out how to make it come to life. This might come from an emotional experience, like thinking of how it would be if we could leap forward in time after we are dead and have a conversation with ourself as a skeleton . Our future skeleton might ask us “Are you doing what you really want to be doing in your life? Is there another path you want to be on ? Do you owe someone an apology? etc.
I always keep a picture of my 6 year old self in my studio and remind myself not to let her down. I find it enlivening to think of ourselves long after we are gone but also as that six year old that is still who we are. These thoughts came together in The Painter and her skeleton.

Your touch, a thousand wild creatures

Irene, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a visual artist, I draw, paint and make things out of cholla cactus skeletons and other materials I find in the wilderness. I started drawing and making things when I was a kid growing up in south Texas on the border of Mexico. My mother and father didn’t buy us toys, instead they encouraged us to make things to play with. My mom would go to the local newspaper and bring home the ends of the big rolls of printing and my sister and I would roll them out in the living room and draw and paint endlessly. One Christmas my father (a farmer) had a truckload of carrot dirt from the farm unloaded in our backyard. That was our present! At first my sister, brother and I were disappointed but eventually we turned it into a mountain village where we built little tunnels and made farms and tiny houses. We planted tangerine seeds and created tiny orchards. I appreciate all of the ways my family encouraged creativity.
I’ve always liked to tell stories with my work, to explore emotions and relationships. For as long as I can remember my life and my art are one in the same. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t excited to create something. I wake up with an intense desire to get in my studio and get to work. Everything that happens in my life finds its way into my art.

The Painter and her skeleton

Javelinas at midnight

Studio of the sea

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In my 20’s when I first started going around to galleries in New York I found one where I thought my paintings would fit in well and approached the owner. The icy owner looked at the images I had brought to her and said “I like your work but you should take out all of the words in your paintings and stop using different materials. If you want a show here you must create a unified body of work with each the same size and simplify your work; leave out all of the details.” I was disappointed and surprised that she wanted me to completely change the way I work. I left the gallery and as I walked down Broadway I started to cry but a voice inside me said NO! I don’t want to change my work for her. I couldn’t have anyway, my desire and drive to make what I want is fierce and always has been. I could never imagine a show of my work with all the same size and materials. My mind sparks in a different way. I find a strange old wooden door or find tiny bones from an animal and use to create something, whatever it is that excites me. Eventually I found galleries who appreciated my imagination and what I create. I follow my heart and never change my ideas or my work to please anyone. Years later I was showing in a gallery in Chelsea and when I delivered the work for a show, the owner didn’t like the pieces I had made out of little bones that I dissected from owl pellets. He said he would exhibit my paintings but not the bone pieces. I told him he couldn’t show the paintings unless he showed the bone pieces. He relented and one of the bone pieces was the first to sell in the show and I sold all of them.

I knew you’d come back

Better is the Ready

Call from the desert

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My work is like a big lively world of everything I’m interested in, excited about, brokenhearted about, etc. I paint about love, relationships, animals, mortality and many other things. But much of my work deals with the desire to rewild, to learn about and paint about wild animals. I’ve always loved animals and especially those who are often misunderstood or unloved. I know we need all species with which we share this earth. In almost every place I’ve lived I’ve been involved with organizations to help wildlife. When living in Oregon I was active in a group working to stop animal trapping on wild lands. When I lived in Maine I worked at Acadia Wildlife, helping rehabilitate injured animals and every year I donate artwork to Northern Jaguar Project and other organizations helping wild ones. Its important to me to speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves; to do what I can to help all things wild. I always donate a portions of my sales to wildlife organizations.

I also feel that’s its very important to support other artists and if I do well after an exhibitions I buy a piece of art from a younger artist

Contact Info:

• Website: irenehardwickeolivieri.com
• Instagram: @lightseekingeyes

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