About Laura Olenska
I am a French-born painter based in Wellington, New Zealand, where I have lived and worked since 2017.
I am a self-taught artist with a background in art history, cinematography, and opera singing in Paris, and I primarily work with oil on canvas from my Wellington studio.
I build my paintings through layered classical techniques while developing contemporary psychological and narrative atmospheres. Most of my work emerges from imagination: dreams, visions, memories, desires, fears, and fragments of personal experience. Each painting carries a subtle connection to my inner world.
I often conceive my compositions like still frames from an unseen story. Rather than delivering fixed messages, I aim to create paintings that invite questions, and ambiguity.
Having begun my artistic journey relatively recently, I am gradually moving towards a deeper exploration of human desire, projection, and the importance human beings give to their own stories and emotions within a far wider world.
PS : I enjoy writing about art on my blog Effluves.nz
