Working in oils (and sometimes adding collage), I use classical painting techniques to pursue a number of threads with equal enthusiasm. I work from photographs I’ve taken for reference, existing vintage photos, or images found online. My work is sometimes driven by my political and moral beliefs, but mostly it’s simply a result of my desire to create something beautiful. The results of these attempts are often narrative-driven, sometimes they touch on the surreal, and are often comic, ironic and absurdist.

Having worked with one of the largest collections of photography in Australia for over 30 years as a picture librarian at the State Library of Victoria, I am heavily influenced by photography and film, and the ‘truths’ that they reveal.

All of my work – as an artist and as a curator - is about truth in one way or another. Truth revealed by irony, humour, cynicism, quoting, appropriating, recontextualising, fragmenting and reassembling. What truths are told? Truths about forgotten ones; truths about ourselves. To choose ‘this one’ (this narrative, this person, this place, this belief) is to ignore ‘that one’. The truth is that a collector or curator, or an artist looking for subject matter, tells lies. My hope is that my work invites the viewer to do a double-take and think about the complexity of stuff.

Influences: Notions of alienation and loneliness. Image nausea and product nausea. Edward Hopper, Mamma Andersson, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Andrew Wyeth, David Hockney, and many other artists – too many to name.

Questions that occupy me: Is all of today's art about art? Why are women complicit in misogyny? Grief is not character building (ok, that’s a statement, not a question). Is neutrality possible? How can I make a difference?

Contact:

Email: otsara@ozemail.com.au

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Olga-Tsara-Paintings/1464822070438355?ref=hl