In May of 2015, Chuck Olson began a working relationship with one of America’s foremost lithographic printmakers, Michael Raburn of Amarillo, Texas. Over the course of the summer of 2015, the pair successfully completed three series of edition prints - each an iconic image representative of Olson’s well known painted work.

These new images translate beautiful, via lithography, the bold, painterly expectations of his work. They maintain the 40” x 32” format of his works on paper while profiting from lithography’s capacity to render striking overlays of color. Each image in the series is built via a succession of 28 to 32 individual, hand made, color separations and executed in a traditional (non digital) 19th/20th century process. 

Under the guidance and expertise of Mr. Raburn, who as a national figure in printmaker has realized remarkable editions for artists worldwide including artists such as Edward Ruscha, Olson will be embarking on an annual commitment to lithography with the hopes of realizing two to three new prints every year. Collectors can expect an ongoing series of images related to Olson’s themes of objects, artifacts, landscape, and maps.

In this digital age of Giclee and JPEG “printing” it seems anachronistic to march back to a hand made print process that finds itself on the cusp of cultural extinction. However, what is old can truly be new again in that the action of hand and eye with traditional materials can reveal cutting edge possibilities within a world of screens in which hands off printing is ubiquitous.

These prints are much like painting in development and effect. They touch on recurring themes of the monument, the historic landscape, and the object/artifact executed through the course of 28-45 color plates, driven with a painter’s deliberation.