Olivia J Calderwood Bio
Born and raised in MA, Olivia comes from a family of artists. Living in a home filled with her great grandfather's watercolor landscapes, she grew up with a love of soft nature paintings. Deciding to pursue a career in art, she began attending Maine College of Art & Design in 2018. Much of her early work is filled with nightmarish creatures and dark story telling, inspired by the horror films and books she read as a child. This love of scary stories is now blossoming with her more recent exploration in special effects and film. When not in the studio making strange things, she can be found hanging out with her horse Freddie.
ARTIST STATEMENT
A heavily cloaked figure looms in every corner, haunting. It lulls victims into deep states of depression, convincing them to rest, to stop trying, to stop living. The victim is never aware, until it’s too late…
I am driven to make horrifying yet fantastical work that will suck viewers into the strange worlds created in my dreams and nightmares. I have never been afraid to sleep, and yet all of the dreams I have ever remembered could easily be called nightmares. Death, fear, and the unknown all plague my sleep. I use my memories from these dreams to create paintings, drawings and now prosthetic pieces that build onto the stories as well as incorporating styles and techniques from the Surrealism movement.
As someone who deeply enjoys horror movies, monsters, gore, and psychological thrillers, another driving factor for my work is why people enjoy creations that are supposed to be terrifying. I seek to understand what it is that drives us to love this layered genre by making my own versions of terrible creatures and their lore.