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Joshua Seiden's avatar

One of the things that I find so moving about your father’s career is the way idea follows idea follows idea. There’s a questing there that I really admire. These feel so provisional and immaterial—you say that they’re “unresolved” and I feel that so strongly. It’s like the lines themselves are a part of the quest.

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Victoria Olsen's avatar

Thank you for this. That’s lovely.

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Rona Maynard's avatar

Oh, my! Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. He pulls me into the heart of a great unraveling, in which only the eyes are not morphing into formlessness. What an unnerving portrayal of an artist’s impoverished old age.

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Victoria Olsen's avatar

Yes, maybe that’s the explanation. Poignant—

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Cynthia Morris's avatar

These are great. I love your writing, Victoria.

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Victoria Olsen's avatar

Thank you, Cynthia! I have appreciated your encouragement for years now— it means a lot to me.

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Jeffrey Streeter's avatar

These works are both unsettling and yet also full of vibrant life

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Victoria Olsen's avatar

Yes, that’s what I think too. Now it’s strange to me that I didn’t ask more about that paradox at the time, but <shrug>.

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Jane Chapman's avatar

I know very little about art but there is something very captivating about your father's work

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Victoria Olsen's avatar

Thank you. It’s good to follow that feeling when something in art “catches” you. It’s the main thing, really. 😁

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Lisa Maguire's avatar

Go Away and Standing Man are extraordinary. Standing Man in particular is remarkable in the way the continuous lines appear like a tangle of yarn and somehow gather to form the image in spite of their chaotic and stringlike quality.

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Victoria Olsen's avatar

Thanks for that. Tangle is a good word for these, and applies equally to my feelings about them! Writing this helped me appreciate them more, as do these comments. 🙏

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