Anje Olmstead demo at June ACAA Meeting

Artist Anje Olmstead brought her extensive experience and insight about creativity to the June 10 meeting of the Amador County Artists Association. She detailed the many paths she took through a career spanning 30 plus years.  Coming up to the present, she discussed the processes and tools she used to produce her current series of animals in garden settings.  Combining several sources, Anje creates transparencies of each part of her proposed composition.  Using an overhead projector, she tries out a variety of configurations, adjusting the relationship among the parts as well as the size of each component, to come up with the final composition. 

To help all of us in our endeavors, she had numerous suggestions:  Find something inspirational and exciting.  Humor is good.  Use ideas from magazines and study the top artists.  Don’t do what everyone else is doing.  Figure out what your market is and create with that in mind.  If you are selling a certain type of art, keep doing it.  Come up with a series title and use it to challenger yourself.  Join a critique group or at least show your work to others. 

If you haven’t already, take a trip to the entry of Margaret’s Café at the Jackson Rancheria to view Anje’s 8 x 9-foot collage portrait of former Rancheria leader Margaret Dalton.  This piece amply demonstrates Anje’s creativity and resourcefulness.  You can also view her paintings and collages at Sutter Creek Gallery.