This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Arts & Entertainment

Workhouse Artist of the Week: Eileen Olson

See her work in Building 5, studio 505 at the Lorton Workhouse for the Arts.

It took decades for Eileen Olson to pick up the paintbrush. The former nurse, who uses stunning combinations of color on her canvasses, meditates before getting to work at studio 505 at Lorton's Workhouse Arts Center. 

“I’m very, very quiet and come into myself," Olson said. "When I do get started, I’m very messy. I have to have a zone, a vision. I trust my spontaneity and go for it. I’ll be painting seven-to-nine hours to my detriment, because it hurts my back. But I will paint and paint. And when I’m done, I’m physically exhausted. It’s like I’m drained of everything.”

Olson was discouraged from becoming an artist at an early age. "It’s not easy to make a living being an artist," Eileen's father replied after the 11-year-old annnounced she wanted to go to art school.

Find out what's happening in Lake Ridge-Occoquanwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“And you know, he wasn’t so far off. Here I am, 50 or so years later and it’s a struggle and a sacrifice to be an artist,” Eileen said. 

Eileen, a native of Brooklyn, New York, began drawing and painting in the fifth grade. “I went to the Brooklyn Museum of art when I was 13 for a summer course. I took busses and subways to get there,” she said. “Later in high school I would sit up at night drawing and sketching, doing portraits and trees and landscapes. I couldn’t afford supplies so it was just basically with graphite pencils.”

Find out what's happening in Lake Ridge-Occoquanwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Eileen loved art, but looked up to her older sister, Barbara, who worked as a nurse in New York. “I listened to her talk about taking care of people. I thought I had a good personality for caring and providing comfort and support,” she said. 

Eileen was to begin studying at the Brooklyn School of Nursing when tragedy struck. Barbara accidentally pricked herself with a needle at work and contracted Serum Hepatis.

“She died a week before I was to start,” Eileen said. “I remember my dad at the table, after we buried her, announcing that I was not going to nursing school because he wasn’t about to lose another daughter. But my mom said: ‘You wanna go, you go,’ and I went and I was very happy. I think my sister would have been proud of me.”

Eileen married Michael Olson in 1971 and had three daughters. The family moved to Springfield 35 years ago. “I really didn’t paint or create when I was a nurse,” Eileen said. “When I do something, I do it all the way. I was 100 percent nurse - studying, working, trying to raise the kids, staying focused. It takes a lot. But when I retired at 51, I jumped right back into art.

“My husband was a tremendous supporter of me," Eileen said. "He told me to do it now. So, I have to give him credit for nudging me and saying, ‘It’s your time, it’s your love, I want to see you happy—let’s do it.’"

"Yesteryear," a large abstract acrylic that hangs on Olson’s wall is a neutral-colored example of her energetic style. Priced at $7,000, it’s one of her most expensive pieces. Small originals are modestly priced at $50.  

“I would like to meet everyone’s pocketbook so everyone can have a piece of my art,” Eileen said. “I want people to see my work and know it’s mine. I incorporate pastel, oil and graphite, metallic dust—everything in all my paintings. I’m always doing research to find out what is the newest craze, and what I can do to make it my own and accessible to anyone.”

Eileen Olson currently has a painting on display at the Touchstone Gallery in DC with the “Art in Hand, The Washington DC Project” show. She was one of 54 artists commissioned to create the flip side of a card for a deck of DC based artists (she is the 10 of diamonds, and the deck can be purchased on the Art in Hand website). In August, Olson will show again with Touchstone from Aug. 4-27 with a mini-solo of her work.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Lake Ridge-Occoquan