Don P. Olsen — Abstract Expressionism
Don Penrod Olsen — was born in 1910 and died in Utah 1983. He made Utah his home. Don was one of the most significant artists of Utah to emerge with more of a direct line with radical modernism.With his painting, Don reached an immediacy, involvement, and energy level seldom attained by his Utah peers. It is an explosively vital work which attacks the viewer’s sensitivities with internal expressiveness. His work protests the niceties of his colleagues and escapes to art of a different nature at its most ferocious. In Olsens words: “Painting is not and illusion. A painting can only be itself; it does not simulate, borrow from, or pretend to be anything outside itself. It is a real thing and its reality lies in being itself. A painting reveals the internal expression of the artist and has nothing to do with observation of visual facts”
