TREASURER
ELECTED ARWS 2022 & RWS 2025
Olivia was born in the mining town of Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Her childhood landscapes included not only the industrial and working class parts of the town but also wilder areas of surrounding moorland, echoed in the paintings she creates today. Her father was a Polish immigrant after the Second World War; he arrived in Britain with a sketchbook in his cardboard suitcase.
After studying music at the University of East Anglia, Olivia worked as a teacher and in teacher education and research. Towards the end of her career in education, she began painting and drawing courses at City Lit London, completing the Fine Art course in 2016. She won the RWS Contemporary Open prize in 2019 and the RWS Cass Art Solo Exhibition prize in 2020. She has exhibited in group shows in London and Yorkshire, and has been selected for Ing Discerning Eye, Society of Women Artists and RA Summer Exhibitions, as well as two solo exhibitions.
Olivia’s work has two main focuses: the industrial buildings, blocks of flats, streets and parks of Southeast London where she lives, and the landscapes of England and the Drome in France. Her work is based upon on- and off-site sketchbook drawings and paintings as well as still and moving digital images collected on her iPhone. Sketches use charcoal, ink, watercolour and pastels. Her work is mostly on paper using acrylic, watercolour, ink, pencil and crayon. Olivia wants the images she creates to demonstrate a sense of commitment to a place, a reflective commentary on the continuum of what can be described as ‘ordinary’, whether a building seen from a commuter train or a brown English beach on the South Coast.