Kia ora, and welcome to my website where I hope you can connect with me, my art and mission — to create art with wonder and empathy…sometimes with one more than the other. I hope my work offers viewers a moment of connection and recognition of what can be wonderful or challenging about our shared human experience. My next public exhibition will be hosted by Exhibitions Gallery of Fine Arts in Wellington. Dates will be announced soon so please connect to join my mailing list and receive updates.

Artist bio

Simon Olsen (b. 1980) is a contemporary artist based in Pōneke | Wellington, Aotearoa | New Zealand. His oil paintings combine layered impasto, gestural mark‑making and bold colour to create a tactile language that pulls the viewer into a bodily, felt response, before interpretation. His work explores psychological and spiritual tensions — how something can be seen as either miraculous or mundane, freeing or painful — and how these hinge on shifts in perspective or acceptance.

Olsen’s latest body of work, the Renewing series, is a collection of figurative paintings where light, shadow, and water interplay as recurring symbolic motifs. These works invite viewers into the unstable space between clarity and obscurity — where inner states surface or recede in a fluid, shifting balance. They seek to hold a stillness, suspending the dynamic moments when renewal becomes possible.

Olsen’s debut solo exhibition Right Under My Nose (Thistle Hall, 2025) drew strong audience engagement, with coverage in the Regional News and most works acquired. Later that year, his painting Surrender received 2nd place in the Inverlochy Art School Annual Exhibition’s People’s Choice Award, from over 100 entries. He maintains an active studio practice in Wellington, supported by ongoing mentorship from established painters and study at Inverlochy Art School.

Artist statement

My work focuses on the emotional and physical impact of oil painting. I use strong contrasts, textured surfaces, and thick layers of paint to create an immediate feeling rather than something that is only understood intellectually. Using palette knives, heavy paint application, and divided sections of colour, the build-up of paint on the canvas reflects the complicated inner states I’m exploring. My colour choices play an important role too, balancing bold, intense colours with softer, earthier tones.

At the heart of my work is an interest in emotional and spiritual change — the point where pain can turn into acceptance, and ordinary moments can feel extraordinary. Rather than trying to solve or explain these tensions, the paintings sit within them, exploring how small changes in perspective can shift the way we experience reality.

This currently takes shape through paintings where the human figure becomes a space of change and uncertainty. By letting light, shadow, and water move together in fluid ways, the paintings capture quiet moments where deeper or hidden truths come clearly into view or fade away again. Each painting begins as an exploration and slowly becomes a conversation between my intentions, surroundings, materials, and whatever naturally develops on the canvas.

Ngā mihi nui,
Simon

PS: this short video here provides more insight into my artistic practice (at least as it was in early 2025, before my début solo exhibition and more recent evolutions).