Irene Hardwicke Olivieri’s enchanting, idiosyncratic and curiously complex artworks explore the subterranean aspects of life, love and relationships, secrets and obsessions – all the while opening a window to what she calls the “mysterious workshop of nature.”

Olivieri is infinitely inspired by the natural world, and her intricate paintings are laced with knowledge of the cougars, wood rats, caterpillars and other animal familiars she relates to. The artist is physically and emotionally exposed in many of her autobiographical paintings, but neither humans nor animals are simple portraits under Olivieri’s brush: her works explore the wildness within and without.

Author Carl Little’s introductory essay highlights the artist’s background and delves into her processes, motivations and revelations. Olivieri’s brief stories offer the inspirations and ideas behind her paintings, drawings and mosaics. Inset miniature vignettes and painted text invite close study. Interwoven natural history writings, folk wisdom, journal entries and excerpts from family letters open a door into the artist’s extraordinary world, drawing the reader ever closer to wildness.

Olivieri was born and raised in southern Texas. She studied art in Brazil, Mexico and Texas before earning her masters degree from New York University. While living in New York, she worked as a gardener and lecturer at The Cloisters and at The New York Botanical Garden, creating drawings of neotropical palms and the insects that pollinate them. She now lives off the grid in the high desert of Central Oregon, where she raises caterpillars, water lilies and succulents and keeps a dermestid beetle colony.

See Olivieri’s work at the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene, April 1-August 3. www.irenehardwickeolivieri.com/book-closertowildness.

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