Skot Olsen

While growing up in Connecticut, Skot and his parents spent their summers sailing up and down the coast of New England and all over the West Indies. It was on these long trips that Olsen developed his love for the culture and history of sea-faring people. Whale watches and scuba diving cultivated an interest for the strange things that live in the sea such as giant squid, which are the subject of many of his paintings. Small harbor towns and islands provided backdrops for many of the artist's formative years and the people he met there left an impression on him that is now visible in his current series of work.

Olsen is also exploring the world of Psychedelic art. After a mind-changing trip to Amsterdam and a summer of ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms, Skot was left with a mental residue from which he takes inspiration for an ongoing series of Neo-Psychedelic paintings. The first of these were displayed in 2007 at the Harold Golen Gallery in Miami, Florida. However, four days into the show, the gallery burned down taking 20 of Skot's pieces with it including all the paintings in the psychedelic series, some of which were not yet photographed. Undaunted, Olsen is back in the saddle working harder than ever to create new work.