Olga Seem's intense, luminous paintings serve both as physical representations of intellectual investigation and as guides to emotional contemplation. Her blowups of seeds, pods, roots, dried plants, fossils, and succulents become shapes, color, and texture. Coiling, looping lines add a delicate layer of kinesthetic energy, like developing floating cells. The effects are various.
Some paintings have a lyrical open airiness, while others gather into dense particles of color.
The larger works on canvas or panel are given a heavier outline, enclosing the form, holding it stable, giving it a sense of sculptural solidity and weight. In her works on paper images seem to evaporate, mysteriously blending into a darkened, foggy background. What Seem conveys is a theatre of interiority, an intimacy of detail that opens with the viewer's gaze. Her source is nature. This nature is not overwhelming, tragic, or romantic.