Olaf  Krassnitzky was born in Czechoslovakia and grew up in Vienna, Austria.  He came to Canada in 1972 and worked here in various positions in healthcare management.  For the last 10 years he has been working full-time as a visual artist.  Olaf’s father was an architect and artist who worked for most of his life in Salzburg,  Austria.  Olaf lived and worked in Toronto between 1972 and 1987.  In 1987 he moved to Ottawa, and to Rockland in 2008.
Olaf has been painting and drawing for most of his life.   A painting of the University of Vienna and surrounding buildings, painted in 1964, can still be viewed in his studio in Rockland.  Olaf is almost entirely self-taught, with the exception of a few lesions in etching and printing at Central Tech in Toronto.  His work has been influenced very much by his father’s art work, in particular in the area of abstraction and symbolism.
Since 2001, Olaf has been exhibiting his works in the Ottawa region and adjacent areas, and also in Montreal.  Notable venues were the Ottawa Art Festival at Lansdown Park, at the Bruyere Family Clinic in Ottawa, the Cumberland Art Gallery in Orleans, the Westport Art Show,  Art in the Park in Ottawa, the Lions Club Show in Cobourg, the International Art Show in Montreal on the Jacques Cartier Pier, and the show at the Place Desjardins (Hyatt Hotel) in Montreal.  Olaf also participated in many group shows in Orleans, Manotick, Nepean, and West Carleton.  His work was shown in galleries in Ottawa such as the Parkdale Gallery, the 7A Gallery, the Electric Gallery, and the Art Prince Gallery, the latter two in Vanier.  He was also a member and executive member of the artists’ coop ‘Galleriart’ on York Street.  For several years he served as coordinator and executive member of Arteast.

 
Artist’s statement
Olaf believes that too much of contemporary art is tied up in techniques, materials, ‘novelty’, and in that sense ‘the medium has become the message’.  Alternatively, a great deal of contemporary art is preoccupied with photographic realism.  The representation of meaning has become the exception, rather than the rule.  While this may well reflect (as art should reflect) our age and our values (such as the search for novelty), a case can be made that ‘meaning’ has to be brought back into our culture, and art would be the vehicle to do so. 
Today, the biggest need for meaning is in the field of ecology and the environment.  Olaf is still trying to find a visual language that communicates related meanings, and that includes the meaning of human presence in our environments.
Art form or genre

At present, Olaf has focused his work in the following areas:
The human figure and portraits; urban landscapes and genres; large scale abstract,  surreal and symbolic images, as a development of earlier work.
Style

Most of the work is two two-dimensional on canvas, board or paper.  However, some of the work is carried out in relief style in concrete, or as three dimensional collages and mosaics.
Most of the two-dimensional work is carried out  in oil, alla prima, but increasingly with the use of glazes.  Olaf uses ‘the line’ extensively which gives many of  his pictures an extra graphic quality.  In that respect, Olaf has been influenced by artists such as Egon Schiele, Paula Rego, Bernard Buffet, Wassilij Kandinsky, and, of course, his father.
In addition to painting, Olaf loves to draw in charcoal, in particular the human face.  Charcoal portrait sketches from life (usually completed in a half-hour sitting) are made available at no charge. Olaf only asks to retain a photo of the drawing.  Appointments can be made at 613-446-1476 in Rockland or e-mail to olafkrass@sympatico.ca