Lance Austin Olsen

Lance Olsen

Opening Friday, September 4th, 2026, 7 to 9 pm.

Show Runs Saturday/Sundays, September 5th to 20th, 2026.

“I have worked continuously on visual art since I began art school in London UK when I was 15. I am now 83 and have not really slowed down that much. I have since 2015 avoided exhibitions and the effort away from painting that it requires to both get and install an exhibition. I have concentrated on my work and have a daily practice that continues to evolve my visual language. Two and a half years back I became ill and found it difficult to go to the studio to work; although I still do produce work in the studio I developed a method of working on an iPad to produce single images printed on BFK RIVES cotton rag paper 22” X 30” that marries very well with my painting production. This also indulges my belief that artists should embrace new methods of producing their images.

Since I am less able to do the big works daily I am still able to constantly work even if it is from my living room couch. This exhibition is about the moment that we all inhabit known collectively as “Now”; the only moment in which we exist. As always I view each piece as a footstep through my life, a diary of my daily thinking if you will.”

This exhibition and artist will be featured as part of Culture Days 2026 at Xchanges; learn more here.

About the Artist

Lance Austin Olsen was born London, UK in 1943. He studied under Frank Auerbach, R.B. Kitaj, Euan Uglow, Michael Rothenstein and others at Camberwell School of Art from 1959 to 1965 before emigrating to BC in 1968.

Olsen is a painter, printmaker, composer and Zen practitioner whose work focuses on the dialogue between his abstract visual art, and parallel work in experimental audio composition. The use of collaged and repurposed pieces of earlier work, a hallmark of his large-scale paintings, is echoed in his approach to both printmaking and audio work. He collaborated with artists and musicians including Ragnar Axelsson at White Wall (Berlin), David Sylvian (UK), Terje Paulsen (Norway), Gil Sanson (Venezuela), Bruno Duplant (France), Jamie Drouin (Canada), Jeremy Borsos (Mayne Island and Athens), and the collective Noema, performing at the Havana Biennial in 2013.

He continues to collaborate with international sound artists while concurrently working with a iPad on series of no edition 22” X 30” images.