Stan Olthuis

Arm in Arm, 2019, house paint & acrylic medium on panel

About the artist:

Stan Olthuis is a Canadian multi-disciplinary visual artist based in Peterborough, Ontario. His current work is the culmination of an ongoing curiosity with relationships between people and objects. The results are minimalist, engaging, and playful with spatial tension and interaction of abstract shapes and colour that are powered by a palette altered by recent years living in Mexico. 

Stan is unbiased to materials. Concept and process drive his work. Currently he uses workman’s trowels, power tools, house paint and often found objects to make paintings, wall sculptures and interactive pieces that welcome the viewer’s involvement. 

His formal art education started in Chicago under Dutch Henrik Krijger, a celebrated master printmaker, type designer, painter and sculptor. Early influences on Stan’s development were diverse: Salvador Dali, Willem de Kooning, Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg. He earned his degree, with special mention, in Experimental Arts from the Ontario College of Art. There he studied under artists such as printmaker Fred Hagan, Painters Eleven artists including Tom Hodgson and conceptual artist Tom Dean. He was co-creator of the content and the creative producer for UNCEDED: Voices of the Land, Canada’s groundbreaking immersive multi-media exhibit representing Douglas Cardinal and Indigenous architects at the 2018 Venice Biennale for Architecture in Venice, Italy. 

Stan is represented by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Abbozzo Gallery and Motokawa Gallery in Japan. Stan continues to expand his repertoire of materials, addressing our relationship to one another and the world around us.