M. (Margaret) Pettee Olsen, (b. 1963 – Rochester, New York), received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and MA from Columbia University. M. began her creative life in dance and visual art. Invited to dance with the American Ballet Theater as an understudy, M. ultimately pivoted her focus to painting. As a young artist in New York, she established the lithography press, Oberon Press Ltd NYC, in Tribeca, as founding curator. Since its founding, M. has cultivated over three decades of a career in painting driven by long-time interests — shifts in perception and highly keyed psychological states at play with categorical thinking.
Her paintings have been described as ”mutable perceptual events,” by art historian Stephanie Grilli, Yale PhD. Informed by abstract traditions, M. ventures into new territory in painting with the latest developments in pigments and a sensibility that taps the tone and tenor of our times. Career highlights have been published in Artforum and Art News. The press has also received the artist positively in Westword — A Village Voice publication, The Denver Post, The Providence Journal, and Art New England. Pettee Olsen has been in residence with Michael David, M. David & Co., Brooklyn, NY, (2020), is a fellow of the Ucross Foundation (2019), and has received numerous awards, including an Artist Grant from the Rhode Island School of Design.
M. Pettee Olsen is a fully engaged participant in the current art scene with inclusions in symposia, interviews, and recorded podcasts. M. Pettee Olsen’s work is included in private collections internationally. The artist lives and works in New York.