My art practice to date has been as a painter, working in oils and sometimes adding collage in the form of photo transfer and/or textile. I use classical painting techniques to create works that are narrative-driven, sometimes touching on the surreal, and are often comic, ironic and absurdist. My imagery comes from photographs – personal family photographs, vintage 19th century photographs, or images found online (including social media and Google searches).

My work is driven by my political and moral beliefs, and addresses issues common to our contemporary realities, including alienation and loneliness, image and product nausea resulting from consumerism, the commodification of and profiteering from almost everything known to us, including women and children. 

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. 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: Can art be anything other than human centred? Why are women complicit in misogyny? Is neutrality possible? Can I make a difference? Pain is not character building (ok, that’s a statement not a question).

Contact:

Email: otsara@ozemail.com.au

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