Artist Update
Dear Collectors,
I hope this note finds you and your family healthy and prosperous! I wanted to reach
out to all of you the (somewhat) old fashioned way via e-mail in light of my Instagram
account being hacked and stolen from me, with no recourse or help from Meta. Please
follow my work on the new Instagram account @sheila_olsen_artist, and I apologize for
any and all strange messaging or posts from the hacker of my old account.
As most of you know, the inclusion of Lucky Charm Too (or “That Big Blue Painting”)
as the centerpiece of Jen’s living room for the three seasons of Dead to Me was a huge
break. A little secret is that the reason the painting was called Lucky Charm “Too” is
because the big blue abstract is actually painted over a still life I painted in Laguna
Beach that featured a pot among flowers and bushes. My husband and I were
traveling in a remote part of Greece a few years ago and one morning a water surge
occurred on the island causing the sink hardware to shoot off and almost hit our
laptop, with water spurting everywhere. After a mad scramble to find the main valve
outside the house, we are sitting there dazed and the cell phone rings. It totally felt
like a crank caller: “Hello, I’m with CBS Studios and I was thumbing through the
Laguna Art magazine, saw your ad, and I’m wondering—could I rent that blue painting
in your ad if it is still available…” “Um, why would you ‘rent’ my painting?” It turns
out I was talking to a blue chip set decorator, and the rest is history. When Season 2
dropped right as the COVID lock down took hold, I painted like crazy and shipped
paintings all over the world. It turns out that the water spurting all over the place was
a sign! The set decorator has several additional pieces of my work for potential
inclusions in sets. One of my works made the briefest of appearances in American
Horror Story. I have my fingers crossed that another work is going to have screen
time in the upcoming film The Killer by David Fincher and starring Michael
Fassbender and Tilda Swinton. It releases on Netflix on November 10.
To bolster the overall value of my work, I have discontinued making or selling prints of
any kind and am only selling original paintings. After a several year run with my
gallery in Laguna Beach, I moved my Laguna presence to the Laguna Art Lounge at
1951 South Coast Highway and our family moved to St. Pete Beach, FL. Today I’m
painting mostly Florida inspired abstract seascapes and flora and fauna; expressionist
abstracts; and commissions. One recent commission I wanted to highlight is my first
ever door as a canvas. I painted an abstract galaxy scape for Billy and Donna Hays for
their penthouse condo overlooking Pass A Grille pass into the Gulf of Mexico just
across the intercoastal from my home. They really wanted the inkling of a bird within
the abstract. After much thinking and reading, I included the idea of a bird, but
borrowed from one of the great works of the 20thcentury: Constantin Brancusi’s
famous Bird in Space sculpture. I aimed to paint the movement of the bird rather
than the physical shape of the creature. It worked out well, and I can now count a
fire door among my types of canvasses!
If you are ever in the Tampa Bay area, please feel free to reach out to me. My work is
displayed in several locations around St. Petersburg and St. Pete Beach, and our home
doubles as my local gallery. If you are ever in Laguna Beach, please reach out and I
will set you up with a private showing at the Laguna Art Lounge. Thank you so much
for your patronage of my work!
Best,
Sheila Olsen
