Olga Krimon’s Blend of Realism and Abstraction

There is a lot of superb contemporary realism being made these days; this article by Allison Malafronte shines light on a gifted individual.

Los Angeles artist Olga Krimon (b. 1972) has an eclectic and robust educational background that has led her to develop a signature style now being recognized internationally. Born in Odessa, Ukraine, she received an academic art education in Kazan, Russia, and was greatly influenced by the prominent figures of Russian art history, among them Repin, Serov, Bryullov, Levitan, Kramskoi, and Fechin. She also felt an affinity for the swift, bold brushwork and careful value arrangements of Sargent, Zorn, Sorolla, and Cecilia Beaux, and therefore studied their work closely for many years.

Krimon first came to the U.S. as an exchange student in 1991 and then moved to California in 1996. Eventually she started taking drawing classes with illustrator and California Art Institute instructor Glen Orbik, as well as classes with the Los Angeles figure painter Jeremy Lipking. Add to her resume a B.A. in art history from Davidson College and an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California, and Krimon was perfectly poised to handle all aspects of her professional career as a fine artist.

Her style today is built on the fundamental principles of academic realism, the energetic movement of impressionism and expressionism, and an abstracted view of values, edges, and color transitions. The subjects and themes Krimon chooses to explore — dreamlike imagined realities and suspended spaces where nostalgia and memory have room to breathe — add a layer of intrigue to her work.

For her “Weightless” series, Krimon dove deep into both realism and abstraction to find the exact place where color, value, and composition hold together structurally yet flow freely. “I am fascinated with the way reality can be portrayed and enhanced through abstraction,” the artist says. “The realistic paintings I most admire are superbly constructed but usually through a minimum of means. When looked at closely, they are an absolute feast of abstract strokes that create reality, that give life to the forms and make our eye follow a certain path within the painting.”

“Convergence,” pictured here, is one painting from the series that shows Krimon hitting a harmonious chord of color, composition, and content. “I wanted to see how far I could take the abstraction in this piece because it was only through the abstraction of forms that I could create the feeling of water against the skin,” she explains. “It is the contrast of light and dark, the warmth of the skin and the coolness of the water, the movement of the water and the stillness of the figure that I was after. It is not a portrait; rather it’s a portrayal of the feeling of being suspended and carried by the water.”

This painting — which received a Certificate of Excellence in the Portrait Society of America’s 2023 International Portrait Competition — captures the exploration and experimentation Krimon has been pursuing to propel herself forward over the last year.

This article was originally published in Fine Art Connoisseur magazine (subscribe here).

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