Subliminal Landscape #39

Olga Seem

Olga Seem showed this piece at the "On Paper" exhibition at Space Gallery in Los Angeles in 1991, and at the Mount St. Mary's College solo exhibition "Subliminal Landscapes" in 1992. Space Gallery owner, Edward Den Lau, was known for his interest in works relating to nature or made from organic materials such as wood, paper, or clay. Seem, whose work focused primarily on themes of plants and other flora in both natural and urban settings, was frequently invited to exhibit at Space Gallery from the mid 1980s until its closure in 1995.

Seem's work often presents nature in abstracted vignettes, with parts of plants or landscapes superimposed against a manmade backdrop or enveloping the signs of human constructions within. In this mixed media piece, two drawings present two different views - or ideas - of the same scene: in the top half, Seem uses color to focus on a wild landscape that surrounds a wooden footbridge, while the bottom half, in black and white, shows unused fence posts lying on the ground surrounded by the landscape's detritus and fauna: sticks, fallen leaves, and a lone lizard.

Olga Seem [a.k.a. Olga S. Kooyman] was born in Los Angeles, California on April 26, 1927. She studied at the University of California Los Angeles where she received her BA in education in 1949 and her MA in 1963. She married Donald K. Kooyman on April 23, 1950, and though she formally changed her surname, she continued to sign and exhibit as Olga Seem. She worked in watercolor, oils, ink, pastel, and color pencil, and exhibited throughout the U.S. and in Japan. Seem taught at numerous colleges in the Los Angeles area, and retired as Professor Emeritus from Los Angeles City College, where she taught painting.

Seem won numerous awards including the Distinguished Woman Artist for 2004 from the Fresno Art Museum; the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Artist Grant in 2002; and the E.D. Foundation Artist Grant in 1989 and 1993. She has had numerous solo exhibitions, including a retrospective at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles in 1992 and a two-person show, Affinities—Olga Seem and Maritta Tapanainen in 2013. Her work is held in the collections of the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums, among others.

While a teaching assistant at the University of California, Olga Seem shared an office with others including Henry Hopkins who owned an Ed Ruscha painting entitled Sweetwater. He apparently paid for the painting in installments and once it was paid for he carried it with him from one position to the next. The large painting faced the office wall and after seeing it for a year in the office, Seem inquired about the ownership of what she thought was an unfinished painting. No one seemed to know the history of the painting and its ownership and she was told by her advisor to take it. She did just that and in 1963 she painted a thick ground of blue enamel paint on the canvas. (This was reported by Gordy Grundy in his article "The Confession of Sweetwater: Who Painted Over Ed Ruscha's Masterpiece?"), Ruscha was amused when he heard the story.